“Helplessly I Fell” by Jim Lord

Jim Lord has been in the business of being a singer/songwriter for a number of decades now, and he’s putting everything he’s learned as a troubadour to work for him in “Helplessly I Fell,” the new single from his latest album, Little Star, which is currently out everywhere independent music is sold and streamed. Approaching his verses with a tempered, classically folk aesthetic, Lord shies away from experimentation in favor of sticking with what he knows best in “Helplessly I Fell,” and it’s the audience that winds up reaping all the rewards of his efforts when everything is said and done. There have been scores of great indie folk/rock releases making waves this spring, but for purity, there’s no trumping this recent dispatch.

URL: https://jimlord.com/

This track has an awesome flow that feels almost like a live performance more than it does a standard studio recording, and similarly to the songs it’s joined by in Little Star, “Helplessly I Fell” doesn’t include any of the typical artificialities that have become commonplace in new music today. There are no bells and whistles on the guitar parts, nor are there any beefed up components on the backend to create the illusion of spaciousness in the composition. Lord doesn’t need any of these fanciful tricks to make a big impression here; contrarily, I think that kind of fluff would just get in his way in a track like “Helplessly I Fell,” which is designed around a fairly simplistic concept rather than a particularly progressive one.

Lyrically speaking, I think this song could represent the most vulnerable look that we’ve ever seen Jim Lord adopt in a studio recording (2017’s Live at Armando’s doesn’t count). It’s obvious that he isn’t holding anything back with his verses here, and for every sterling band of melodic ribbonry that the guitar parts emit, the ensuing harmony seems to reflect all of the emotion the words are trying so desperately to express to us. Lord isn’t utilizing linguistics as an exclusive means of imparting his narrative to us in “Helplessly I Fell;” instead, he’s employing virtually every authentic weapon at his disposal whilst adhering to a stripped-down aesthetic that doesn’t allow for overindulgence in any scenario – especially when dealing with a ballad like this one.

DEEZER: https://www.deezer.com/us/track/77214449?autoplay=true

For fans of big harmonies and the mighty tradition of American folk-rock, Jim Lord’s “Helplessly I Fell” is a grand slam that cannot afford to be missed this March, and I’m definitely not the only critic remarking as much right now. Whether planning to do so or not, this singer/songwriter raised the bar for himself and the scene that spawned him with the release of Little Star and its lead single this spring, and though it tells us a lot about how much Lord has grown in the last forty years-plus, it tells us even more about where he’s planning to take his music in the future. I’ll be sticking around for the ride, and judging from the response this track is getting, so will the rest of the indie folk underground.

Nicole Killian 

The music of JIM LORD has been heard all over the world due to the radio plugging services offered by Musik and Film Records. Learn more –https://musikandfilm.com