Music Release: Gin Wigmore's 'Blood To Bone'

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

One story on our list this morning is a title, a slug, in which almost every word leaps out. The title begins, Gin - like the drink - Gin Wigmore, "Blood To Bone." Gin Wigmore is a musician born in New Zealand, and the rest of that slug is her new album. "Blood To Bone" suggests the rawness of songs that are written as a way of managing the pain of loss. Here's NPR's Lauren Migaki.

LAUREN MIGAKI, BYLINE: Gin Wigmore's songwriting career began after her father died when she was just 17.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HALLELUJAH")

GIN WIGMORE: (Singing) Hallelujah for this mind that keeps our souls combined. Hallelujah for this life...

MIGAKI: She wrote this song, "Hallelujah," as a tribute to him.

WIGMORE: At that time, I was real mixed up, a lot of denial and didn't really want to come to terms with what had happened. And "Hallelujah" was everything that I wanted to say that I didn't know how to when he was alive.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HALLELUJAH")

WIGMORE: (Singing) So don't say goodbyes that last forever now. Oh, no, just for a while.

MIGAKI: "Hallelujah" won grand prize at the 2004 International Songwriting Competition, and it helped launch Wigmore's career. Now 29, the singer still uses music as a way of confronting her past.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW RUSH")

WIGMORE: (Singing) I step on you to sip on fire. I got this feeling that I can't go back.

MIGAKI: Gin Wigmore's newest album, "Blood To Bone," tells the story of the past couple years of her life.

WIGMORE: I was waking up next to my ex and that horrible kind of sinking feeling when you wake up in the morning, and you look over at the person lying next to you, and it was that sinking feeling of, oh, this isn't right. I don't want to wake up next to you. I don't want this to be my future.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW RUSH")

WIGMORE: (Singing) It's always you in my bed. And in that bed I saw our deaths. I need to sleep with my eyes on someone new.

MIGAKI: Wigmore eventually left that partner.

WIGMORE: And you feel this doubt, and have I done the right thing? And have I gone completely insane? And I don't know.

MIGAKI: She moved across the world from Australia to Los Angeles, and she fell in love with someone else.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WILL LOVE YOU")

WIGMORE: (Singing) I will love you. I will love you until the blood all leaves these veins.

MIGAKI: It was only after she got married that she realized she needed to put the past two years down on paper

WIGMORE: In a way, I wanted to torture myself, I guess or figure out why I felt like this. And I think if you write about it and try and figure it out and then articulate it, you've kind of come to the point where you've - that's kind of the breakthrough in my mind.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WRITTEN IN THE WATER")

WIGMORE: (Singing) Yeah, it's written in the water. Yeah, it's everywhere I go, telling me that I should leave you like I did two times before.

MIGAKI: Gin Wigmore's new album is called "Blood To Bone." Lauren Migaki, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.