Haley Heynderickx’s self-described “doom folk” songs alternately shimmer with playfulness and shudder with earnestness; one moment, they take a magnifying glass to bemusing, mundane details, and the next, they pose startling existential queries. The balance brings warmth and humor to “Untitled God Song,” the second single from the Portland singer-songwriter’s forthcoming debut album, I Need to Start a Garden. In it, Heynderickx draws from her religious upbringing to paint a touching portrait of her spirituality and the higher power that “spins [her] around like a marionette.”
Heynderickx said that she retreated to a dark basement to write “Untitled God Song,” for fear of being overheard by her roommate. Her self-consciousness is understandable, given the intensely personal nature of her subject, but none of it appears in the final recording; her awestruck lyrics are delivered in a loose but rich vibrato, amidst swells of echoing electric guitar and exultant trumpet. Heynderickx is contemplative and curious, leaving subtle feminist fingerprints by gendering her God as female and imagining how she deviates from conventional Western standards of feminine beauty. Her God carries a knock-off Coach purse, wears crappy shoes, and has “big hips and big lips.” Still, she inspires wonder—she’s the “great glimpse of heaven” in every sunset. Heynderickx may bill herself as a writer of “doom folk,” but in “Untitled God Song,” it sounds like she’s inching towards salvation.
