Exclusive track premiere of ‘Provenance’ by St. Louis Americana group Lost on the Metro.

For singer Jilly Morey, writing poetry is often a way to parse childhood trauma that stemmed from her parent’s divorce, bullying, and the resulting depression – all things that would likely be treated stigma-free nowadays in counseling. Back then, seeking help simply wasn’t something a typical GenX-er would do, so as a teen, writing became her outlet.

In much of her poetry, from which she pulls lyrics for her St. Louis-based band Lost on the Metro, Morey deals with dark and complicated themes in a healthy and cathartic way. Each song plays as though she’s holding in outstretched hands a different emotion; a newfound darkest thought; her most temporal sentiments. Writing is her way of fabricating an antidote to the buttoned down, more repressed way she was raised, and each song on the band’s new album asserts more and more that it’s healthy and important to have, and feel, those dark thoughts.

Formed with husband David, Morey’s band Lost on the Metro is easy to connect with and engaging to hear, due in no small part to the sparkling guitar, fiery vocals, and the ways in which the two interweave. New single ‘Provenance’, which was originally a four page poem, was drawn from themes of death, family, and community during the pandemic. Musically, Provenance features soaring vocals and screaming slide guitars in an alt-country endeavour, but below the surface the song battles disillusionment and disappointment with a buoyant, renewed optimism.

“For me, listening to ‘Provenance’ is like lying in a dark room at night, and you see the lights of a car driving by as they sweep across everything on the dark wall. Flashes of light, flashes of color, images highlighted, and then darkness again. The lyrics are glimpses and impressions all wrapped up in hoping there’s more out there. So fear and hope I guess underneath all of that. The driving guitar pushes it all forward.

My poems are usually really long, and we pick and choose what will work as lyrics once David has a workable riff we both like. I originally wrote ‘Provenance’ about my mom as I was still processing her death and thinking about my own life without her. Then Covid hit, and our neighbor, who is a nurse, was spending her free time making hundreds of masks to keep people safe, and people were still dying at alarming rates. I just kept thinking about this friend as she sewed masks for people, some of whom would not make it. It made me think about how we often bury the ones we love in lovely clothing to honor them, and how we contemplate death when life feels most fragile.

We recorded ‘Provenance’ over a period of about a month at Stained Wood Recording here in St. Louis. The initial guitar tracks were completed pretty quickly – David and Josh were in the studio doing that for just a couple of days. The parts that always take us longer are the vocals. We spend hours thinking about notes, harmonies, would another guitar layer work here, do we need more layering there, what percussion works here, should Jilly redo vocals on this part….we spend a lot of time overthinking details. LoL. We really appreciate Brendan Falsetto (at Stained Wood Recording) and his musicality. He has honest critiques that make sense, and he has suggestions that often help to bring our songs up to a better level of production. We were really happy with the outcome!” Jilly Morey

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