Review: Kelly Prescott, Love Wins

Driving across an expanse of dust-blown nothing you can picture Kelly Prescott, stealing away to somewhere far from where she’d been. Prescott’s new EP, the sun-warmed Love Wins, is a record about escape and regret. It’s also a record about possibility and hope, about remaining open in the face of heartache – love wins, after all. 

The EP is light as air, a shimmering collection of songs woven from acoustic guitar, gentle pedal-steel and soft percussion. It doesn’t quite maintain the heights reached by first single and lead track Church, but it’s a beautiful thing nonetheless – Prescott’s lyrics are rich with both conversational specificity and world-weary poetics, and the simple arrangements allow for her storytelling to shine. 

The patient duet Running Out of Road and bluesy love song 25/8 are both highlights – heavy with compassion and yearning, they hold at their core a sense of resignation, to both love’s end and its giddy beginnings. But it’s the aforementioned Church that acts as the EP’s crown jewel. The melody is Prescott’s most stirring, and features her lyrics at their blunt best – “You took all the friends we made/ I’ll take the dirty looks at Safeway”. Love Wins is the work of a songwriter with a deft touch and an open heart. 

Love Wins was released February 21, 2020 .
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