Album Review: Pieta Brown — 'Dreamin' Of'

Twelve years ago on Pieta Brown’s seminal album Paradise Outlaw, the folk songstress sang a tender duet with Amos Lee about desperately trying to get to the morning “after the longest night,” when the world awakens with birds and church bells and school buses. Four albums later, Brown and Lee revisit their collaboration on her newest release, Dreamin’ Of, except this time around the urgency for tomorrow is slowed.

On their new duet “Drinkin’ Side,” the plea instead is for time to stop, paused in present moments: “Please don’t ask me / To let you go today,” Brown soulfully pleads. The singer is embracing in the night; the darkness is less threatening now, instead offering a reprieve, just as folk music does.

“It’s the time of the night when the world is full,” Brown wistfully drawls on the opening track of Dreamin’ Of. The time of night when people are dancing in candlelight, highways dotted with shimmering headlights. But eventually, even Brown knows day must resume, as well as the prickly realities of life in 2026.

As much as the album speaks of past lives and love letters, it also gnaws at the constant churn of tragic war and all-encompassing news cycles. The night might be for dancing in the backyard, but the day brings the morning news to your feed. The title track and core of the album was inspired by a news story Brown read about a father losing his children to war, and yet “somehow urging love and tenderness.”

The album’s production emerged from a quest for respite. Brown found that solace in a 12-hour drive to the studios of Mike Lewis and S. Carey (producers on this album and Bon Iver bandmates) in brisk Minnesota and Wisconsin.

On “Someday Someday,” you hear the sound of far-off chimes blowing in the wind and the creak of the chair one imagines Brown rocking back and forth in, plucking at piano keys — hammer to string, poetry to music, war to love.

Musically, each track is richly realized, whether it’s the warm ache of the strings on “Time of the Night,” the dirtied-up wailing guitar breaks on “Once I Was,” or the dainty and whimsical “la la las” and “do do dos” that roll in from Carey and Lewis in harmonies. Each production choice (with contributions from the likes of Bo Ramsey and Jeremy Ylvisaker) is anchored by Brown’s tender, honeyed vocals, striking a balance between soothing lullaby and delicate warbles that carry a history of lived experience.

Even in its marvelous evolution of sound and thoughtful production, fostered by years of creative collaborators, Brown’s message stays steadfast across her oeuvre: All that we have to give and respond through in this world is love. Or as the title track puts plainly, “The war is never over / Neither is my love.”