KIM TAYLOR has been adding her smokey, slighty breathy vocals to Over The Rhine albums and shows for years, and the inclusion of Days Like This on their new album The Long Surrender shines an overdue spotlight on their fellow Ohioan’s songwriting as well. The song choice bridges their album and Taylor’s deeply personal solo work; the AA/NA-type catchphrases no accident to her or for an album about setbacks.
”Days is certainly a recovery song,” she told Tincanland. ”I had gone through a bad time and was trying to find something to hold onto when I wrote this one.”
Taylor’s best songs leave a lump in your throat, and like Long Surrender are best heard with the sparser arrangements common on her 2008 Greatest Story EP (which gave us Days Like This) and much of the 2006 album I Feel Like A Fading Light. Put her on a dark stage under a pin spot with just a piano and she’ll break your heart.