"Covers" by Isaac Stalling

Everyone falls for Isaac Stalling pretty quickly. Covers is the debut single from his upcoming debut album.

Isaac Stalling is a talented multi-instrumentalist and a thoughtful singer-songwriter. The opening to his new single, Covers, is a lovely classical style guitar. It’s a fabulous autumn song about covers in the literal sense: quilts, comforters, and more adjacent comforts such as dogs. It’s a cosy song for the cosy season. But… there is a little darkness here too. Despite all those comforting covers, he’s still not at peace.

The overriding feeling from the mainly acoustic music and pared back vocal delivery is safety and comfort. Sometimes we feel relaxed even if the singer himself is working through some issues.

With his debut album Falling in Place, Isaac Stalling joins a robust lineage of side-people who, after quietly penning their own songs, have stepped into the light. Born in Munster, IN, Stalling’s nomadic childhood took his family to Chicago, Buffalo, and finally, Oklahoma City. His songs bear the influence of his parents’ artistic intersectionality, his father a professor of poetry and linguistics, his mother a sculptor, painter, and dancer. Once the family landed in OKC, Stalling first picked up the guitar at age 12, a self-described “jazz kid,” cutting his teeth playing at churches. By his junior year of high school, he would begin touring nationally with Americana and gospel bands, his first experiences as a side person.

Here’s a short snatch of those wonderful lyrics.

Under quilts and covers
Comforts escape me
Can’t sleep without a body in my arms
Time and time again
I’m clawing at my own hands
I never wanna hold my broken hands again
Is it the last hand I will ever hold again

This song is great in headphones. It is partly about the isolation but also the confidence that can come when you start fresh in a new place. I have always been happiest when on the move, even though my favourite place is home. Riddle me that. I believe it is an essential step in adulthood to re-establish yourself in a new location.

For some of us, college provides that opportunity. For musicians, they get that opportunity all too often. If you are able to work from everywhere, is it harder to work from anywhere in particular? How do you settle your mind or find new friends? What if the old place turned out to be a better fit than the new place? If you have moved once and know how to do it, how do you find out if and when to move again? How to know whether it’s better to remain or to remove?

Isaac himself has this to say about the process behind Covers.

Covers, my first step into a new solo project, is a song that tackles my feelings of transition into solitude and the exploration of finding comfort within oneself. It was written in the first weeks of moving to Brooklyn from Oklahoma City. With the help of my friend and collaborator Sam Skinner (producer/engineer for Pinegrove), we focused on creating a soundscape that aimed to pinpoint those feelings. We stuck to a strict ethos of “no nonsense” instrumentation and wanted everything on the track to be played and recorded with as little editing and manipulation as possible, with the hopes of creating the most human and honest sound as we could.

Album: Falling In Place

There are quite a few singles to get your ears around before the album drops, but this is what is in store for all of us in the coming months. I have listened to the whole album now and I can promise there is real depth and quality on the way.

Falling in Place was recorded during Isaac’s first year as a New Yorker, with contributions from an ensemble of friends, new and old, who have punctuated this chapter of his life. Combining his roots of Americana and folk with studied jazz and rock sensibilities, Falling in Place feels both classic and singular, a sound Stalling has pioneered through years of touring. As he finally steps into a songwriter and producer role, he hopes not only to explore his solo project, but to write and produce other artists as well.

It turns out that Isaac’s wider career is falling into place too. As well as playing all the famous places in New York, he was recently asked to feature on lead guitar on the most recent Daniel Caesar Single released, Call on Me.

You can follow Isaac Stalling on Instagram, sign up for his mailing list on his own website, or book New York tickets here. All your streaming options are here.