The kind of love that New York singer-songwriter Allison Weiss writes about is a seasonal kind of love. Parts of it feel like the love that curls up like a skinned rug at the mouth of a chimney that's burning hot in the late days of the autumn. The majority of the love that she's speaks to, however, is the kind that's not made itself known quite yet. It's the faceless and limbless kind of love that is recognized in theory only. It's what we remember of it - from a time not all that long ago, but still far enough in the back reaches of a memory to be confounding when any attempt at recalling it is made.
It's the kind of love that is marked with aspiration and plenty of unpredictable blessing. It's the kind of love that is most similar to a love that is expectant - for instance one that crops up in the early springtime, when there's nothing concrete to bet on. The Farmer's Almanac might bee warning us that such and such is going to be - as history has shown - a good week to put the potatoes and carrots in the ground, but it's all so much guesswork and old wives' tales. It's just banking on anticipation and what should happen, what we've seen spring do in the past.
Weiss sings about love in a way that makes us feel that she believes in it, even after it's hurt her. She will give it another chance to break through the warmed soil and take nourishment. There are never any guarantees, but there never are with living things - plants of people. She sings, "I fell for something far away again," and it's a line that's mostly heartbreaking, but just as much focused on what it means to wait something out. The distance complicates everything, as does general impatience, but these songs of sweet hope can set you at ease with the slow nature of the process.