Tennessee band Edward and Jane capture empathy’s emotional depths in their cinematic new offering “The Knife,” a song that gleams like hot metal in its dark, heavy ambience and raw lyrical grit.
Stream: “The Knife” – Edward and Jane
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Spending less time in my head, and more in my heart, I aim to love those around me better, and enjoy life for all of its beautiful moments.
Love is beauty and love is pain. Not only can it hurt to love someone, but when you do love someone so unconditionally, you start to feel their hurt in ways big and small. Your heart hurts when they hurt; it aches when they ache. It’s hard to describe how a notion like empathy manifests itself physically; it can drain the life from the veins, and the color from the face. Folkicana band Edward and Jane capture empathy’s emotional depths in their cinematic new offering “The Knife,” a song that gleams like hot metal in its dark, heavy ambience and raw lyrical grit.
say you’re blind, been spinning for hours
You climb in bed, I’ll jump in the shower
feel alone in the cave of Your covers
while the knife pushes deeper
I’m reminded We’re lovers
take what You need from Me, babe
take all that I’ve got
to tell You the truth I’m afraid
it won’t be enough
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “The Knife,” the lead single off Edward and Jane’s upcoming third EP With You, Always (out later this year). Both a diversion from, and a continuation of the “Folkicana” sound we’ve come to know and love from Edward and Jane, “The Knife” is something old and something new merged into one. Most importantly, it’s a sterling return for the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based six-piece band led by husband-wife duo Timothy Edward Carpenter (guitar/vocals) and Emilie Jane Creutzinger (mandolin/vocals).
In premiering Edward and Jane’s 2018 song “Hold Your Own” – the lead single off their sophomore EP Too Early to Tell – Atwood Magazine praised the band as “the Americana version of The Killers, exuding passion and purpose with sonic similarities to folk-rock titans like Mumford & Sons, The Head and the Heart, and The Lumineers.”
“The Knife” gives us all the more reason to stand by that glowing assessment. Dirty, dusty, and full of feeling and edge, Edward and Jane’s new track captures leagues of emotion through heavy, ambient guitar work, a sweet string accompaniment, and expressive vocals that capture a world full of empathy and pain. A weary soul comes to life as Edward and Jane let their moving music wash over our ears and our hearts.
it’s five pills today,
five more tomorrow
the damn side-effects
are too hard to swallow
I hate to see You this way
but don’t feel ashamed
it’s by Your own body,
You’ve been betrayed
Wet, driving guitars accompany Carpenter’s aching tenor as he leads us through a soliloquy filled with poignant reflection and feeling. “For a dreamer like myself, it is difficult to be fully present… fully engaged with the present,” he explains. “I have spent the past few months attempting to slow down the pace in which I experience life. Spending less time in my head, and more in my heart, I aim to love those around me better, and enjoy life for all of its beautiful moments.”
Carpenter sings a raw outpouring of love in the song’s chorus; his words are fervent, yet his pace is slow and methodical as he creates breathtaking harmonies with his wife:
take what You need from Me, babe
take all that I’ve got
to tell You the truth I’m afraid
it won’t be enough
“‘The Knife’ is written from a place of visceral fear of another’s pain,” Carpenter explains. “It’s an attempt to empathize with someone, knowing full well you cannot actually understand, and yet, holding out your hands offering all of yourself in love to them. Amidst seeking inspiration, growth, and success amongst other things, these songs [off the new EP] modestly and graciously presented themselves. It was as if each song knew just what we needed to hear before we knew what we wanted to say.”
The artist describes Edward and Jane’s new EP With You, Always as “a scrapbook of memories, some full of joy, others full of pain. The album reminds us that you cannot have the joys without the pains, nor would we want to… While written over the span of 2019, it is in listening back together upon the record’s completion, that we are learning the most about ourselves.”
Edward and Jane continue to dive deeper into themselves, expanding their sonic palette and leaving us breathless with every successive EP release.
As the introduction to the band’s third installment, “The Knife” is an exemplary show of growth and artistic development, not to mention sheer vulnerability. From a lyrics and music standpoint, the song is a confessional outpouring straight from the depths of the soul. It’s slow, but it never drags; heavy, but still light on the ears; cinematic, but not at all bombastic or over-the-top. “The Knife” finds Edward and Jane reaching a new production high: Epic and majestic, it presents the band at their best, showcasing the very best of their tender, loving sound.
Stream “The Knife” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned for more from Edward and Jane as they prepare to release their third EP With You, Always – out in 2020!
take what You need from Me, babe
take all that I’ve got
to tell You the truth I’m afraid
it won’t be enough
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Stream: “The Knife” – Edward and Jane
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