ALBUM REVIEW: Trapper Schoepp Follows Multiple Callings on ‘Siren Songs’

There are two kinds of sirens: warnings and invitations. Trapper Schoepp has filled his new album, Siren Songs, with a wide variety of them, including the calls of good and frightening love, the sea’s terrible lure, and even the sirens that aren’t sirens.

Schoepp recorded Siren Songs at Johnny Cash’s Cash Cabin in Hendersonville, Tennessee, nodding once more to a musical icon (as he did previously with a long-lost Dylan song, “On Wisconsin”). He and the band played Cash’s 1930s Martin guitar, used June Carter’s Steinway piano, and found a fold-up harmonium organ so steeped in history, it could have been used more than a century ago by military chaplains on a battlefield. Schoepp’s songs, however, are all his own, as he explores a sound soaked in folklore, Irish music, and the tangled connections between mountains, rivers, and oceans, all held together by the motifs of hard longing and gentle admonition.

Schoepp deftly explores the sirens that augur danger on “Cliffs of Dover,” which tells the story of an Iraq war veteran grappling with PTSD. The song’s rhythms echo the constant and shattering pains of a mind assaulted with warnings and danger. He borrowed lines from the World War II anthem “The White Cliffs of Dover” by Vera Lynn, and though the song speaks to the lasting destruction of war. It ultimately functions as a call to peace by forcing listeners to remember war’s impact.

On the other side of sirens, the call of love manifests in songs like “Eliza,” which tells the story of a would-be lover pledging his heart to a woman who ultimately leaves him behind. “Good Graces” and “The Fool” add to the romantic theme. The former details the ongoing conversation between lovers at a crossroads, balancing the tranquil with the heavy tensions of what-ifs, while the latter shares the story of an old romantic giving advice to his younger self.

Album closer “In Returning” celebrates loving one’s work — though not without longing, its narrator having given himself to the sea, yet wondering what his life might have been had he stayed behind.

The influence of the waves is further felt in the songs’ rhythms, especially the keening and careening beats of “Secrets of the Breeze” as Schoepp sings “I felt the waves come crashing down / and I was so deep / so deep I might have drowned.” This is the most personal of Schoepp’s songs; during the pandemic’s height, he began paddleboarding often on Lake Michigan, drawn to the wonders of skating atop shipwrecks and being surrounded by icebergs in winter. One day, the wind threw him from his board into boulders, landing him in the ER. The water’s lure quite literally drew Schoepp to danger.

With Siren Songs, Schoepp is ultimately a storyteller deeply rooted in folk music. His songs connect to the past, yet breathe freshness into the present, reflecting the themes of what it means to be human in a world made of narratives.

Trapper Schoepp’s Siren Songs is out April 21 on Grand Phony / Rootsy.