Today, Texas-born singer and songwriter Jess Williamson has released the new single, “Hum Of The City,” which is from her forthcoming sixth studio album, A Mile South of Heaven, that will also released this week on October 9 ,through New West. With plucked acoustic guitars and haunting fiddle, the track conjures the feeling of being lost in the in-between, in place that feels familiar but not quite like “home.” Williamson’s Appalachian lilt beautifully recounts the tale of an existential experience returning to the very same anonymous hotel room she’d unknowingly stayed in years earlier before a life-changing breakup.
Paste Magazine premiered the “Hum of the City” music video earlier today alongside profile on Williamson’s new album. “I’m kind of a wanderer by nature, and this song is about my complicated relationship with the idea of home. I’ve spent years feeling pulled between the excitement of life in the city and the peace of a more rural life, never quite sure where I belong,” stated Williamson. “There’s a romance to being in hotels alone,” she continued. “I love checking into my room, going down to the hotel bar and talking with the bartender.”
The artist: “I once checked into a hotel and realized I was staying in the very same room I’d been in years earlier (room 12, from the song), during a completely different season of my life, right before a major life change. There’s something uncanny about the anonymity of a hotel room holding such a personal memory. The song imagines a conversation with the hotel bartender, asking him to change the music. Sometimes contemporary music feels a little weird if you happen to have history with the person singing it. But old country music always hits.”
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