“Cause we all need / a sense of lore sometimes / like I need a silent mind / in a consumer flood,” Oregon’s Haley Heyndrickx sings off her latest album of finger-picked guitar tunes, Seed of a Seed. Whether it is “a kettle making a tea / ginger” from the song “Sorry Fahey” or considering the “Mouth of a Flower,” Haley turns the anxious cycle of consumption into a more peaceful cycle of contemplation. “And we take and we take and we take.” But, on this lush, often sunshiney album she gives back.

“But oh how sweet is the daylight / When no one is around,” she sings on the rolling “Ayan’s Song.” Haley’s lyrics are often fairly direct and straight forward, more lyric poetry than narrative or absurdist, but along with her adept guitar playing and wonderful accompanying band, it is amazing how evocative the songs become. “If we don’t know better / If we don’t know better / Well, did my parents know better? / No, but they tried.”

The adventurous guitar, influenced by the likes of Leo Kottke and John Fahey, who she apologizes to on this album, perhaps for leaning so heavily on his influence, is enough to make the album a rousing success. But she is also a singer/songwriter, who’s playfulness and pathos and honey-coated voice are just as evocative as her brilliant strings. “Oh daydream die slow,” she sings on the driving “Foxglove,” where the guitar and vocal lines line up with one another, and we cry the same thing: let this last!

It is an album made to protect that process of self-actualization, and the album opener is a fitting introduction, pitting her former self against her present self. “And there’s a woman in the corner / Who makes me pull the f*ck over/ just to stare at purple clover off the highway.” Haley is aware that it is a fight to get at the more contemplative parts of ourselves, and builds a palace of pines and hummingbirds and foxglove for us, all while cell phones and dishes in the sink and daily worries vie for our attention. It is not a simple album, by any means, but it is a highly pleasing one, with a singular outcome: to recognize “there’s an artistry in the day to day to day.” It is a wonderfully meta title for a record–Seed of a Seed—and it’s a poetic look at nurturing the things in our inner lives that will ultimately lead to our fruitfulness.

Order Seed of a Seed HERE