Whitney Fenimore -- State of Being
Whitney Fenimore's State of Being is a quietly powerful album that graciously pulls back the curtain on all the ways that we try (and often fail) to give ourselves grace.
It can take a long time to shake off the dust from our upbringings – maybe a whole entire lifetime. Sometimes that feels cathartic but usually it's just...living. With State of Being, Whitney Fenimore carefully documents those everyday moments that feel like they're just in-between, and brings light to them.
The album opens with "Come Around," a quietly defiant indie folk song that centers the perversion of faith when mixed with fascism and the prosperity gospel. As Fenimore and I have discussed, she isn't interested in making protest music so much as music that's observational – and if it ruffles some feather, well oh well. But "Come Around" ends on a hopeful note as well, asking how religion can be used to help people, instead of as a bludgeon to take things away from each other.
State of Being feels remarkably somber compared to Fenimore's previous work. The music is stripped down, and Fenimore has pared her lyrics down to their emotional core. "Punching Bag" is genuinely painful to listen to – depicting the sense one has in a relationship of taking more than giving. The narrator hopes that there may be some way to balance things out, but as the listener, I get the sense that this is not necessarily an accurate view of how things are.
Similarly, "New Normal" digs into Fenimore's experiences with depression: the ways her family dismissed those feelings as a "lesson from Jesus" and how Fenimore has struggled to learn to accept her feelings for what they are. There are some lighter moments as well, like "Am I Doing This Wrong?" that showcase Fenimore's pop mastery.
At the end of the day, State of Being, is a quietly powerful album that isn't trying to change minds. Instead, Fenimore graciously pulls back the curtain on herself, inviting us to hold space for all the ways that we try (and often fail) to give ourselves grace – in every sense of the word.
