Video premiere: Sara Melson, ‘Same River’

Kevin Bronson on October 16th, 2019

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Sara Melson’s graceful, buoyant folk-pop has always tackled life’s heavier stuff, and somewhere between their doe-eyed vulnerability and steely-eyed resolve, her songs seems to lighten the load of whatever baggage you’re toting.

The inevitability of change is the topic on the table in her new single, “Same River.” Here, the songwriter cribs from Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who wrote: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.” Says Melson: “By the time you’ve lived long enough, you understand that the only constant in life, truly, is change. I was sitting in the back seat of the car, my parents in the front, and it hit me — that they would be gone one day, and how I’ve been behind them in that back seat over the course of what feels like so many different lifetimes. Right in that moment — I don’t even know what they were talking about up there — my dad turned to my mom and said, ‘Yeah, well, you know… You’ll never step into the same river twice’. That was one of those light bulb moments for me as a songwriter.”

The tune is from Melson’s forthcoming EP “Wild & Precious Life,” a supersized affair at eight tracks long. The native Midwesterner, who graduated from Harvard before moving to L.A. to pursue acting (“The Wonder Years” and “Frasier” are among her credits), co-produced the EP with multi-instrumentalist/guitarist Danny Hechter (Badflower, Jordan McGraw/Hundred Handed) and Rick Parker (Lord Huron, Joseph Arthur, BRMC). Parker collaborated on Melson’s last full-length, 2016’s “Safe & Sound.”

The new song, which came out Friday, follows the EP’s first single “Coming Out,” which is tonic for anyone struggling with self-acceptance. “It’s high time I learn to love myself before I’m dead,” she sings.

It’s clear in “Same River’s” video she has found kindred spirits in her bandmates, helping her negotiate the song’s emotional eddies.

||| Watch: The video for “Same River”