Penny and Sparrow‘s sophomore release, Struggle Pretty has characteristic great vocals and includes much more production with backing strings, percussion, and sounds that fill the tracks beyond Kyle and Andy’s voices. There are a few songs on this album that will certainly contend for song of the year.
So the following track “Stoic” is also pretty amazing. The plodding strum and steel guitar combine for a new-but-cool country element to the patented Penny and Sparrow sound. It’s a deep and important song, with personal and reflective lyrics. It seems rooted in personal relationship struggle. The melody line echoes the gospel classic “Blessed Assurance,” which seems to jive nicely with the overall ethos of the album. The “relationship” in question here seems to be a spiritual one, but the lyrics are sufficiently vague to keep it more or less undefined.
