I’m With Her Masterfully Appreciate the Wild Blue World » PopMatters

I’m With Her’s new LP is a knock-out because of the talents of its performers, but sneaks up on the listener through an appreciation of its deeper concerns.

Wild and Clear and Blue I’m With Her Rounder 9 May 2025

I’m With Her is a folk/Americana supergroup. The all-female trio (Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins) have won several Grammy Awards individually and collectively and been nominated for dozens more. Their sophomore album, Wild and Clear and Blue, will win them even more honors.

The three singer-songwriters penned all 11 lilting and literate songs together. They are all listed as written by “Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins“. The title track was inspired by the work of John Prine and Nanci Griffith, two important and influential artists who died last year. O’Donovan sings lead and recalls hearing these performers as a child and how they made her feel. She makes the memories seem as alive today as when she first experienced the music’s pleasures. “Ooh, when I was nine / Heard you singing ’bout paradise / What’s that I asked / And my mama said / That was everywhere when I was a kid / I hear the fiddle and bow / Still playing long after the show”.

The other two women join O’Donovan in harmony, adding a melancholy sweetness to the sentiment. The three multi-instrumentalists (Jarosz: octave mandolin, guitar, banjo guitar, banjo; O’Donovan: acoustic guitar, baritone electric guitar, piano; Watkins: fiddle, cello, Hammond B3 organ) take turns soloing and jamming together in blissful accompaniment. Anyone who has been touched by Prine and Griffith, which means just about everybody who has listened to their music, will be moved by I’m With Her‘s declarations on this track.

The subjects of the other material range from the spiritual (“Ancient Light”, “Spirits of the Night Watch”) to celebrating nature (“Rhododendron”, “Different Rocks, Different Hills”) to the familial (“Only Daughter”, “Mother Eagle”) to the topical (“Year After Year”, “Standing at the Fault Line”) to the wordless (“Strawberry Moonrise”), although to categorize the cuts according to discrete concerns ignores the fact that at heart, all the tracks are connected on a philosophical level.

In that sense, all the songs are spiritual. They embrace the world as a timeless place comprised of individuals with a shared humanity. Some tracks explicitly refer to previous songs. “Spirits of the Night Watch” name-checks “Ancient Light; “Year After Year” verbally refers to the instrumental “Strawberry Moonrise”, and there are other more subtle latent associations. The point is that everyone and everything is part of the whole if we pay attention.

On an analogous level, the three women seem bonded in some mysterious, mystical way as if they are clairvoyantly linked. Plenty of moments seem almost supernatural in how the trio intuit what their bandmates are doing. For example, the song “Mother Eagle” is subtitled “Sing Me Alive” and ends with the separate voices all coming together out of the same nexus. They are different yet the same. Producer Josh Kaufman, who also contributes instrumentally to the record, deserves credit for the crystal-clear assemblage of sounds. JT Bates’ backing on drums and percussion is also noteworthy.  

Wild and Clear and Blue is the kind of album that initially knocks one out because of the obvious talents of its performers, but then sneaks up on the listener upon reflection through an appreciation of its deeper concerns. For example, as the title cut says, paradise is anywhere when one is a kid. John Prine may have been singing about coal mines and Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but as the mother in the I’m With Her song implies, it is that special place we all had when we were young that has been superseded by development and time.

The album as a whole provides an aural place of comfort. Being wild means not limiting oneself to social expectations, staying clear suggests keeping mentally aware, and blue evokes the pleasure of seeing color and the sadness of mortality. Music can stimulate these thoughts and emotions; as the group’s name indicates, we can appreciate our situation together.