Kelli Baker’s Granite sneaks up on you. The first time I heard “Silk Flowers,” I was halfway through making coffee when that line about silk roses and green gardens stopped me cold. She’s singing about being lied to in a relationship, but the way she threads her grandmother’s fake flower decorations into it makes the whole thing feel like flipping through an old photo album you forgot existed. Using her actual great grandparents on the cover is the kind of choice that could’ve been cheesy but instead feels like she’s letting you into something real. There’s dust and heat baked into these songs, and you can tell Arizona isn’t just where she’s from but part of what shaped how she hears the world.
“Granite (Badlands)” is where things get heavy in a way that’s hard to shake off. Writing about her dad through the memory of playing pretend detectives together, calling him Luke Granite, that’s the kind of detail that makes you realize you’re not just listening to another blues record. The live recording with Noé Socha doing guitar and harmonica simultaneously sounds like two people trying to hold onto something slipping away. Around the 2:21 mark, when the instruments start talking to each other, it’s less about technical skill and more about what happens when musicians stop performing and start remembering. The abandoned Texas gas station in the album art isn’t trying to be artsy, it just looks like the inside of the song feels. Empty, stuck in time, still standing but barely.
