• News

• All

Apr 08, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Audrey Steimer

Bridget Kearney is likely best known for her work with successful pop soul outfit Lake Street Dive but in recent years she has also built a thriving solo career, releasing a trio of albums with the latest, Snakes in Paradise, arriving last year. Later this week, Kearney is quickly following with another new album, Comeback Kid, arriving on April 12th via Keeled Scales. She has already shared a string of new singles from the record, and today she’s back with the album’s title track, premiering with Under the Radar.

Comeback Kid as a whole finds Kearney occupying a spacey and liminal style of indie pop, joined by layers of vintage synths and atmospheric production. The opening moments of the title track strip these layers back even further, accompanying Kearney’s vocals with only a distant thrum of piano. As the song unfurls, Kearney is joined by an immersive rhythm section and dreamy backing vocals, elevating the track into a wistful and hazy reverie. Yet, she also anchors these evocative aesthetic touches with organic instrumentation and yearning melodies, bringing them a sense of grounded intimacy.

Kearney explains of the track, “I found the phrase ‘comeback kid’ to be inspiring as it relates to resilience and perseverance. In the context of this record, I think of it mostly in terms of being able to overcome many heartaches and still keep believing in love. In playing around with the language, I realized there were a lot of ways to repurpose the word ‘comeback.’ The song includes a couple of different interpretations. ‘The jerk store called and they’re running out of you’ comes from a famous Seinfeld episode, ‘I know you are but what am I?’ is a schoolyard classic, and the ‘hail mary’ in the second verse is a reference to sports comebacks, trying to make a big play at the last minute to miraculously make your way to victory when it seemed all but impossible. This can happen in a relationship too, just making some ridiculous attempts to save the thing from falling apart when it seemed like all hope was lost.

The trick of the song is that it’s not really about victory. The narrator is called ‘the comeback kid’ because they are always begging their lover to ‘come back’ to them. The happy ending is when she finally learns to walk off the field and give up the game.”

Check out the song and video below. Comeback Kid is out on April 12th via Keeled Scales.