Ashley Morgan and John Flanagan of the folk-pop duo Faultlines are out now with their first holiday single, Snowfall. In the vein of Brandi Carlile’s “Heartache Can Wait”, the cozy and warm single about spending the holidays with the ones you love takes the band back to its early stripped acoustic sound with minimal instrumentation, consisting of acoustic guitar, light electric guitar tones, and a cello by Artem Litovchenko.
“Like Judy Garland’s Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas or Bing Crosby’s I’ll Be Home for Christmas, there are elements of heartache and longing in Snowfall,” explains John Flanagan who co-wrote the song with Danny Rivera. David Kidd produced. “However, the song endeavors to soothe that longing with a happy ending, and don’t we all need a happy ending in 2020?”
“I always swore I wouldn’t write a Christmas song,” John Flanagan reflects from his Los Angeles home. “With its heavy religious overtones, I feared Christmas might be too heavy a topic for our diverse listeners. I’ve since softened my opinions. Western culture celebrates Christmas as a season of giving, of geniality, of love. That’s the feeling we tried to capture in Snowfall: a warm, safe space in a dark, cold season.”
John grew up in small town New England. He recalls Christmas as a picture postcard holiday. On Christmas Eve, he and his sister Jessica would shiver in the snowbanks waiting for a fire-engine Santa to pass along a dirt road. Midnight mass was aglow in advent candles, and Christmas day was spent sledding and unwrapping gifts on his aunt’s eighteenth-century farm.
Ashley Morgan grew up in Northern California and she, too, has warm, fuzzy memories of Christmas. She and all of her cousins would gather together to cook, play games, put on silly pageants and walk around the neighborhood to gaze at the holiday lights. All of their sleeping bags would be lined up on the floor of the den and they would wake up on Christmas morning, excitedly running out to find their stockings by the tree while Ashley’s mom made Swedish pancakes in the kitchen. She’s excited to return home this Christmas for more endless games and cocoa.
As Faultlines, John and Ashley’s unique brand of folk is a mashup of modern pop and roots country. In addition to Snowfall, the duo are promoting the release of their third EP, Bittersweet Revival. It features a good amount of upbeat songs and ballads with the duo drawing inspiration from Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, Joni Mitchell and Brandi Carlile.
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