Hear Lera Lynn, John Paul White’s Haunting New Duet ‘Lose Myself’
Lynn’s collaborative album ‘Plays Well With Others’ includes appearances by Shovels & Rope, Nicole Atkins and Rodney Crowell
By Jon Freeman
The first voice to appear on the new Lera Lynn song “Lose Myself” actually belongs to singer-producer John Paul White, whose breathy delivery hints at an inexorable, all-consuming attraction beginning to take shape. The song appears on Lynn’s forthcoming duets album Plays Well With Others, to be released via Single Lock Records on June 22nd.
Recorded at White’s Florence, Alabama, studio and co-produced by Lynn and White with Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes), Plays Well With Others sees Lynn working with a variety of likeminded performers and using only acoustic instruments in a sharp departure from the more synthetic sounds of her 2016 album Resistor. In addition to White, Lynn sings with Rodney Crowell, Dylan LeBlanc, Nicole Atkins and Shovels & Rope, with whom she performs a cover of TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me.” In “Lose Myself,” Lynn and White trade lines over minor-key strums of acoustic guitar while the music builds to an intense storm around them, mirroring the characters’ likely futile attempts to preserve some sense of individuality – compelling evidence that Lynn and White are ideal creative foils.
“The writing sessions with John Paul and I took place in the late Rick Hall’s office at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals AL.; the gold record plaques saying to me both ‘Nope, that’s not good enough,’ and ‘You’ve got a good chance to catch something,'” says Lynn, who made an unsettling appearance as a musician in season two of HBO’s True Detective. “But writing for us was an unbelievably easy breeze. One of the songs we wrote in those sessions had me fighting back the tears. And I swear I’m not a big crier, at least not in front of co-writers.”
Plays Well With Others will be released June 22nd. Here’s the full track list:
1.”Same Old Song” with Peter Bradley Adams
2. “Lose Myself” with John Paul White
3. “What Is Love” with Dylan LeBlanc
4. “Breakdown” with Andrew Combs
5. “Crimson Underground” with Rodney Crowell
6. “Wolf Like Me” with Shovels & Rope
7. “Nothin To Do With Your Love” with JD McPherson
8. “In Another Life” with Nicole Atkins
9. “Almost Persuaded” with John Paul White