Hannah Read—the twentysomething Texan who records and performs wistful, intimate indie rock under the name Lomelda—isn’t the first and won’t be the last person to write a song about the long stretches of asphalt that criss-cross the country, but her “Interstate Vision” deserves to be counted among the best American road songs of all time. Atop gently rustling percussion and a somber guitar melody, Read sings about what it means to spend an inordinate amount of time on highways and in parking lots, to know places that exist as temporary planes to the majority of people who travel on them, and to be able to see these roads as locations unto themselves—ones that are chock-full of personality. Read’s warm, tenderly vibrating vocals project a sense of loss and longing, the latter providing buoyancy to “Interstate Vision” in its saddest moments. The tune was an early single from Lomelda’s second album, Thx (Double Double Whammy), which feels slender only because the quality of Read’s work shows it could sustain a much longer run time; on tracks like “Far Out” and “Bam Sha Klam,” she’s able to build entire worlds with sparse instrumentation and a whole lot of heart, as she does on “Interstate Vision.” v
On Thx, indie-rock act Lomelda builds entire worlds with just a few musical pieces
