Ode to Connie Converse

A singer-songwriter out of New York in the 1950s, Connie Converse is one of those musical singularities that are periodically unearthed to our great benefit. An ode to her melancholy, intelligently trapped songs sums up the beauty of her music:

Converse’s music is simple, honest, and utterly devastating. A steadfast acoustic guitar accompanies poetic lyrics, the two colliding with her clear, naked vocals to turn each song into the kind of lullaby that keeps you up at night.

Listen to the song “Talkin’ Like You [Two Tall Mountains]” after the jump. A collection of Converse’s songs has been re-released by Squirrel Thing Recordings and is available here.

https://youtu.be/FjTgowy4a4g&w=580

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Liz Wood is a writer and critic living in Cape Cod. She was a 2022 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow and a member of the NBCC 2023 and 2024 Greg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Words Without Borders, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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