Premiere: The Intimate & Poignant Folk Poetry of Lizzie Weber's "Catcher"

Singer/songwriter Lizzie Weber weaves a poignantly poetic folk tapestry in “Catcher,” an intimate moment of love, loss, truth, and dreams.

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I have a dreamcatcher; do you? It doesn’t work, and I never expected it to; still, I hung it over my last bed, and I hung it over my current one. An existential safety net, my dreamcatcher should theoretically ward off my nightmares – if only that were how psychology works. Still, it’s a beautiful piece of art, a reminder of my own safety and security, and a maybe – just maybe – a magical barrier between myself and my night terrors. Singing about her own dreamcatcher, singer/songwriter Lizzie Weber explores loss, trauma, dreams, and their impact on the human experience in her breathtaking folk ballad, “Catcher.”

I hung from my brass bed frame
a catcher for my dreams
To filter out the bad, the ones that haunt,
the ones where I feel caught.
Still, I wake and feel the loss.
What is it about loss? Its ironclad grip
On our subconscious, invading our dreams.
Like a fish in a net,
or a stray dog on a leash:
caught, caught.

Listen: “Catcher” – Lizzie Weber

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Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Catcher,” the secpnd single off Lizzie Weber’s upcoming EP, You. A young singer/songwriter born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and based in the Pacific Northwest, Lizzie Weber emerged with her self-titled debut album in 2014, and has since put out a slow trickle of song releases. The songs off You actually date back a ways in terms of when they were written, but 2018 is the first time they’re seeing the light of day as fully-realized pieces.

Catcher - Lizzie Weber — Catcher – Lizzie Weber

“This set of songs are ones that I wrote many years ago, after a traumatic break-up,” Weber explains. “They were so brutally honest that I couldn’t bring myself to record them for awhile, even though personal lyrical candor has never been difficult for me — I couldn’t face them. But I wanted to record them because I know these feelings to be universal for those of us who have ever felt the pain of lost love.” Dark, but meaningful: Music has infinite powers, one of the best being its ability to connect us to our deepest, innermost selves.

Weber weaves a poignantly poetic folk tapestry in “Catcher,” an intimate moment of love, loss, truth, and dreams. Her words are particularly expressive as she allows herself to dwell in subjects until their well has dried up; she explores the purpose and meaning of her dreamcatcher (from whence the song takes its name), delving seamlessly into her reasons for having it (night terrors and bad dreams as a result of traumatic loss), and so on.

We listen directly to Weber and her guitar; there are no distractions or overdubs separating us from the artist in this raw reflection. “I originally wrote the lyrics for “Catcher” for a poetry class my last year of college,” Weber tells Atwood Magazine. “It’s about the literal act of hanging a dreamcatcher on your bed and having that childlike, perhaps naïve hope that it spares you from having bad dreams about things buried in your subconscious. The whole idea of dreams is so fascinating to me. Every night, we close our eyes and are subject to whatever our minds feel we should see.”

Last night I saw an old friend
caught on the shore
Of some ambiguous waters:
Quiet, at a loss for words.
And the only time we meet
is in my dreams. Only in my dreams.
If only the catcher
would have caught my dreams.
If only the catcher
would have caught my dreams,
I would be spared that wretched cursed loss.
I would be spared that wretched cursed loss.

Weber continues: “When recording the tune, I knew I didn’t want any production: Just a voice and a guitar — not only to reflect the moment I put the poem itself to music, but also for the overall attention to be on the melodic and lyrical cadence of the song; for it to feel as intimate as a dream.”

One could write essays on the little nuances Weber chose to include in “Catcher,” but ultimately this is an example of a song that bares it all on the surface, revealing the artist’s (and therefore, our own) depth through somber and thoughtful introspection. Whether you suffer from night terrors or lead a problem-free life, Lizzie Weber’s “Catcher” is a song worth listening to and dwelling in: It’s got that special spark that will light up, and quiet down a room.

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