Connie Lovatt has plenty of experience in making music. Born in St Thomas, and now based in New York, three decades of performing have seen her play with the likes of Containe, The Pacific Ocean, and perhaps more relevantly for today, Smog. Until now though, her career has never seen Connie release a solo album, although all of that is set to change later this month when she shares Coconut Mirror, a record she describes as a love letter/life guide for her daughter. Ahead of the release today Connie is premiering the latest single from Coconut Mirror, Kid.

Kid features the vocals of Connie’s former Smog bandmate Bill Callahan, who is by no means the only artist who appears in the pages of Coconut Mirror. Although it was written over a decade, during which Connie spent time everywhere from Los Feliz, California to Wellington, New Zealand, Coconut Mirror was pieced together at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Connie’s vast array of well-known backing musicians, including members of Yo La Tengo, Spoon and Pavement to name but a few, sent her over their pieces. Then with the help of producer Joe Wohlmuth, she crafted them in a cohesive recorded whole, that brings her aim to life, “I wanted to show my daughter that I could still make something after giving birth. I wanted to make a record with acoustic guitar where I’m telling my daughter all the stories that mattered to me”.

Kid began life with Connie stumbling around in a melody, as she explains, “I was trying to think what the purpose of all of this was and I realized I was fumbling toward the stories I wanted to tell Hartley”. Kid is, therefore, a fitting jumping-off point, the moment when a desire to give her daughter something tangible, met her arrival into the world, “I centered the song on her arrival. And us deciding to name her after my dad, a family name. I wanted this to be a song that let her know how magical she made everything. How she came into my life, during a strange period, being in a very new state, both geographically and mentally and incorporating her as lovingly as we could into our family, even though I felt so far away from my own”.

A shuffling acoustic piece, Kid enters with barely brushed guitar chords, flourishes of piano, and textural, brushed drum rhythms, that are unmistakably the work of Dirty Three’s Jim White. Atop the subtly beautiful backing, Connie channels all the love and responsibility of naming a child into something simple, yet undeniably poignant, initially sounding awed by the duty, “I’ve got to give you a name, I’ve got to give you a start”, before digging into the heritage, “I’ve got to name you kid, to thank the mothers, the fathers, the way the gravestones did”. As the song drifts towards a close, the distinct tones of Bill Callahan’s voice join Connie in a moment of reverence and thanks for the world around us, “shed a tear, shed a tear for god”, then as the music stops Bill remains, repeating the mantra, his voice alone echoing through your headphones like the voice of every generation who came before and led us to this one magical moment of new life. Perhaps Connie sums up the feeling best, “creating a new family shifts everything, for a long while things get cosmic, out of control, and elemental. I tried to write that. It grew into the duet of the year”. The duet of this, or perhaps any year, here’s looking at you, Kid.

Coconut Mirror is out September 27th via Enchanté / Chickfactor. For more information on Connie Lovatt visit https://connielovatt.bandcamp.com/.