TD BANK LOBBY SERIES: HAYLEY SABELLA

“Nothing’s wrong, I just feel the whole wide world,” award-winning songwriter Hayley Sabella sings on Sorrow:Joy, a track from her forthcoming album Flew The Nest. Hayley has become known for this kind of simplicity in truth-telling, combining poetic lyrics with gripping melodies that are “sometimes cold and deadly, other times refreshing and full of life.” (Rolling Stone Country) New album Flew The Nest amps up the indie sound and production of Hayley’s work, and pairs it with her signature lyrical dexterity. Working with Daniel Radin of “bummer-pop” band Future Teens, Hayley has created sonic landscapes for these songs that mirror their content. Close-miked vocals and spacious, full arrangements create an album as intimate and confessional as it is melodic and pop-driven, a true step forward for one of New England’s best songwriters and winner of the 2019 New England Songwriting Competition.

“Flew the Nest, as a collection of songs, is one that thematically explores transformation and the self – the ways in which I have become my own,” Hayley says of the new songs. “We all recognize the coming of age stories of teenage years, but I’ve been in the midst of another change, marked not only by leaving home as the title ‘Flew the Nest’ suggests, but also by starting to more fully define myself as an adult, one both shaped by and standing in contrast to the ways I was raised.”

Born in coastal Massachusetts but raised in Nicaragua, Hayley has always been inspired by the dramatic landscapes and vast seasonal changes that surrounded her growing up. Ready to see more of the world in 2019, Hayley set out to travel North America in a rehabilitated 1978 VW bus that she had spent the prior year fixing up with her partner. When the bus broke down 30 miles outside Winnipeg just a few weeks into their journey, she was propelled back home with the inspiration needed to complete this new project. Armed with her signature hollow-body Gibson and sharp wit, Hayley finished penning the tracks that would turn into Flew The Nest, an album that is comfortable sitting in uncertainty.

Hayley’s 2018 album Forgive The Birds garnered acclaim from Rolling Stone Country, Billboard, American Songwriter, The Bluegrass Situation, and others, and led to invitations to support legendary artists including Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder, and Ryley Walker, to name a few. Flew the Nest reveals the next chapter of music from Hayley Sabella, and invites us to consider our own journeys through these songs. In Hayley’s music, the forces of nature are a path to understanding ourselves. Singing, “still water with an endless bottom – dive in, show ‘em if you got ‘em,” she creates a space for the listener to explore their own inner landscape.

Simply, Flew The Nest is an album of transition and growth. As Hayley sings in the opening track “Ordinary”, “good things come from sowing seed, but you can’t remember each one’s name. You just feel its weight as it drops away. Oh, this is all so ordinary.” And that, it seems, is the point.