Premiere: Ed Vallance, ’10:45′

Kevin Bronson on June 13th, 2018

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“Midair” is the aptly titled third album from singer-songwriter Ed Vallance and the first since 2012 from the London-born, Los Angeles-based artist who helps pay his bills as a travel journalist. In a way, “Midair” could also be the answer to the question: “Where, existentially, are we right now?”

Written largely in England during a foreboding winter and an even worse political climate — the approaching Brexit referendum and the U.S. election — the songs on the album do a delicate dance between almost-mesmeric intimacy and icy detachment. Its warmth owes to the gentle layers of acoustic guitars and the production of Mark Ephraim (Neko Case, Dead Meadow). That Vallance delivers his despairing missives so mildly is “Midair’s” sneaky strength. On “Poison Apple,” he sings, “Baby, baby, can’t you see / I’m on a first-class ticket to misery,” and that’s about as excitable as he gets. Most of the rest, in journalist’s terms, is reportage, some of it nice and writerly. Like the snippet: “We’ve had our fill of hollow.”

The new single is “10:45,” and it’s the first track on “Midair,” which comes out Friday. The album is really not as morbid as Vallance’s opening line — “When I die I won’t go to heaven” — but like this song it glides, at scarcely faster than shuffle, towards the dark corners where we’re certain hell exists. If we’re not there already, sitting cross-legged.

||| Stream: “10:45”