Suz Slezak
Our Wings May Be Featherless

March 5, 2022
(Nine Mile Records)

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Our Wings May Be Featherless is the debut label release from Suz Slezak, co-founder of the pioneering indie folk band David Wax Museum. Slezak recorded the poignant and powerful collection, produced by Anthony da Costa (Joy Williams, Yola, Sarah Jarosz), while hunkered down at her family’s home base of Charlottesville,Va. Throughout the nine-track album, Slezak weaves some of life’s most difficult moments – a best friend’s suicide, traumatic childbirth, and her own public struggle with bipolar disorder – into an Americana sonic masterpiece. Our Wings May Be Featherless is the long-awaited sequel to Watching the Nighttime Come, Slezak’s 2015 much-beloved record of children’s lullabies, produced by Josh Kaufman (Taylor Swift, Bonny Light Horseman, Bob Weir). 

For Slezak, harmonizing with another human being (most prominently with her bandmate-husband David Wax) is a sacred act of sharing breath. This lifelong love of harmony is how she, as if by accident, fell into music as a career. Slezak grew up TV-free on her family’s Virginia homestead, in an endless loop of fiddle-playing and singing led by her father, a Catholic seminary dropout, as she, her brothers and a gaggle of fellow homeschoolers traversed gravel roads in their beat-up station wagon en route to choir rehearsals and music lessons. With music as such a natural soundtrack of her childhood though, it never occurred to her that it could be a profession, too. After graduating from Wellesley College and studying traditional fiber arts in India, Guatemala, New Zealand and Thailand on a prestigious Watson Fellowship, Slezak returned home to Virginia in her early 20’s with a dream to start a farm school inspired by her idyllic upbringing. 

But it was not to be. Following Slezak’s mental breakdown and bipolar diagnosis at 24, she returned to Boston in a tailspin, running from the ghosts of home, in search of a steadier new chapter. Hanging over her, the psychiatrist’s dire warning – a lifelong regimen of mood stabilizers, no caffeine, alcohol or late nights, and no chance to safely have children given the high doses of lithium she was prescribed. Working by day in a stabilizing desk job at McLean psychiatric hospital, Slezak started moonlight-singing in bands and playing fiddle in the Boston bluegrass/old-time scenes. A mutual friend then introduced her to David Wax who, beguiled by her effortless dulcet tones, convinced her to join one more band. The two eventually fell in love and for the past fifteen years have co-fronted David Wax Museum, earning accolades from the New York Times to NPR, performing on CBS Saturday Morning, and even playing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s wedding. 

Slezak’s devoted fans waited six years since her first release of lullabies, given the demands of rearing two wee children on the road with David Wax Museum’s relentless touring and prolific recording schedule. As Slezak recently told Rolling Stone, when their touring came to an abrupt pandemic pause in 2020, she gratefully embraced the unfamiliar yet stabilizing domestic routines reminiscent of her homeschooled childhood, gardening, sewing and cooking, while immersing herself in song-writing. In the stillness of non-touring life, she could finally catch the

early morning whispers of these sprouting melodies. Conjuring these nine triumphant songs out of her personal struggles as a bipolar musician-mother amidst a global shutdown, is both the album’s magic and its raison d’etre. As Slezak explains: 

A song can transform haunting pain into sounds and rhythm, allowing it to finally diffuse. I have needed to make this record for a very long time. And the relief I feel that it is finally emerging into this physical realm is quite immense. 

From the first ethereal plucks of harp on the opening track “This Life Is Kindly” to the title-yielding closer “Now It Is Morning” cascading with scenes of childhood, seed-sowing, parenthood, and culminating in a heart-melting duet with her 7-year-old daughter Calliope, the album’s life-affirming ethos shines brightly. Yet she dedicates the album to her childhood friend and first love, who died by suicide in the 10th grade. “My entire life since his death has been colored by an attempt to understand this tragedy,” says Slezak. Both “Why Luke,” the gut punch of a song about his passing (“Part of me died the day you did”), and “Blaze of Gold,” a wistful, haunting ode to her lost friend, delve into her lasting heartache. 

Luke’s death has had a profound affect on my own mental health journey as I have continunally cycled between depression and mania and come to my own understanding of how the human brain can reach such a dire state we call ‘suicidal.’ 

“Loneliness Is Measured” and “Telescope” further explore the seesaw that is the bipolar brain. Slezak lays bare her conjoined states of depression and mania with her haunting piano ballad followed by the nature-infused, psychedelic “Telescope,” with its hooky chorus and drum machine heartbeat revealing the universal connection of all living things. These two songs arise from the eye of an emotional hurricane. 

In contrast, “Beautiful Mess” is cast from a place of maturity, proclaiming Slezak’s empowered acceptance of her illness. Sounding like a long lost Roche sister atop a rollicking mid-tempo Pixies song, the radio single “Beautiful Mess” is rooted in a koan from mythologist Joseph Campbell that Slezak keeps posted above her writing desk (“The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess. We're not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”) gleaned from singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, whom Slezak befriended while touring together. She notes: 

Straightening out my own life has meant looking manic depression in the face, not hiding from it anymore, accepting treatment and making sense of it as best I can. For me, writing this song was a form of healing – a way of coming to terms with a brain that’s been reeling, sometimes out of control, my whole adult life. 

The final emotional livewire Slezak exposes in Our Wings May Be Featherless is her traumatic experience of childbirth. At the heart of the album, the pleading piano ballad “Take Me” tenderly processes the circumstances surrounding the birth of her first child. The song is a

statement of deep acceptance of self, scars and all, and a recognition of the intense fear that can be involved in giving birth. 

I spent many late nights during my first pregnancy in the back of the tour van slogging along I-95 watching ‘gentle birth’ videos of mothers in birthing tubs gently swaying, or moaning quietly as the baby slipped out, and imagining that mine might look and feel the same. When my 40-hour homebirth labor ended in an emergency c-section, it took years for me to process this painful and unexpected outcome. 

For Slezak, the album feels like a gift, one she hopes might inspire others to continue creating, sharing, and healing, as mothers like her worldwide grapple with the unending demands of pandemic parenthood. This major solo release coming out since Slezak turned 40 boldly showcases a wise and compassionate artist coming into her own, encouraging fellow travelers to “find one’s hidden life” and above all, to not give up.

Suz Slezak On Tour

For more information, please contact:
Maddie Corbin
maddie@luckybirdmedia.com