GENRE; Folk/ Country/ Rock
LABEL; Fat Possum
REVIEWED; 29 November, 2025
RATING; 6.9
Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover’s collaborative album What of Our Nature feels like a gentle but urgent folktale for precarious times. Recorded to tape in Vermont and released November 21, 2025, the ten-song set channels Woody Guthrie’s activist spirit while maintaining the duo’s own intimate, idiosyncratic voice.
Musically the album is warm and uncluttered: fingerpicked guitar, restrained harmonies, and analog hiss give space to images of boars, rivers, and labor struggles. The production’s tape warmth suits songs that shift between the elegiac and the didactic.
Lyrically the pair move confidently from the specific to the universal. Conover’s “Song for Alicia” recounts the brutal treatment of Puerto Rican independence activists, while Heynderickx’s “to each their dot” asks quietly, “What of our nature have we done forgot?” Those tracks balance documentary detail with plaintive melody, though at times the album favors impressionistic metaphor over the sharpest political targeting.
Standouts include the tongue-twisting “Boars,” the plaintive “This Morning I Am Born Again,” and the album’s closing “Red River Dry,” which fold folk tradition into contemporary grievance without feeling preachy. Across thirty-two minutes the record’s brevity becomes a strength: it never overstays its welcome.
What of Our Nature succeeds because Heynderickx and Conover write and perform as peers, trading lead lines and letting space for verse and silence alike. It’s an album that rewards attention: the more you listen, the more the small lyrical gestures and tape-worn textures bloom. Released on Fat Possum and produced by Sahil Ansari, the record’s modest arrangements make political points feel personal rather than performative; it’s music meant to be sung on porches and picket lines alike—modest, sharp, and quietly persistent. A rewarding listen for attentive ears and communities.