Tom Dunne: A new name for you — This is Lorelei — and his small town heroes
Nate Amos aka This is Lorelei.
I’ve a new name for you: Nate Amos, 35, AKA This is Lorelei. Currently feted by Waxahatchee, Cameron Winter, Hayley Williams, MJ Lenderman and other members of the cool club. His 2024 album now described as a “masterpiece”. Playing a small venue near you, but not for long.
Amos sings songs of small-town America where people called Joey, Billy, Buddy and Sarah go about their lives. These are people who, as one review said, “have either just fallen off the radar or re-appeared on it after a long absence. At the very least you want to know where they’ve been.”
The prevailing wisdom here is that “most likely you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine”. The characters aren’t as dramatic as Springsteen’s or Bob’s but are all the better for it. No one is leaving town with Mary. No one has that energy. These are small town heroes, f**k ups, n’e’er-do-wells, and of course Billy.
Yes, Billy is back. That kid that sings karaoke like his life depends on it. He’d been gone for ages but he’s back and “my Billy’s got a voice that sings for you and me, like he’s singing from the bottom of a deep blue sea.” Perfect. Draw up a pew. Watch it all unfold.
Like the best of stories, Amos’ own journey to this place of great renown was never going to be an easy one. The wheels couldn’t come off if they weren’t on in the first place; the wheels in Nate’s life are a recent addition. Prior to 2021 his career was on blocks. This is an unlikely success.
He grew up in a music house. His dad, Bob Amos, is a bluegrass guitarist of great renown, and professional level music sessions could break out at any moment. It was small-town Virginia and then Vermont before Nate moved to Chicago for college.
It was here, immersed in the underground music scene, where he met Rachel Brown, with whom he started a relationship and created the experimental, electronic, . Check out their song , you won’t be sorry.
During this time, Amos was doing two other things: he was developing an increasingly destructive relationship with drugs and alcohol, and he was posting so many songs to Distrokid as This is Lorelei that it incorrectly identified him as a bot and blocked him.
As he journeyed towards sobriety, music became an even bigger obsession. He says he would make music for 12 hours a day, afraid that if he stopped he’d relapse. Two tracks in particular became North Stars for him. Blink 182’ s — “a signal in a world of noise” and, incredibly, our own Sinéad O’Connor.
It was Sinead’s unaccompanied version of Shane McGowan’s that lit the fuse. Amos describes the effect of it on him as being like “a sleeper agent being activated”. The upshot of all that being 2024’s .
The song on that album that did the heavy lifting was Self-produced and self-recorded, it is as great a tale of heartache and redemption that you will ever hear. Picked up and performed by Cameron Winter just as Geese exploded, it is a type song for the ages.
It was at this point the world and its mother started to cover Amos’ songs. You can hear the result of that on the super deluxe reissue of . Hayley Williams, Jeff Tweedy, Tim Heidecker and so many more bringing these songs to a whole new level.
Record company interest was inevitable. Soon the Matador label — home of Cat Power, Pavement, Belle and Sebastian and more — were involved. Incredibly, they negotiated a deal and got Amos signed without ever knowing he had an album already recorded. He delivered it in full just two days later.
That album, , is a joy from the beginning to its end, a short 35 minutes later. It’s like stumbling into a bar in a John Prine song. Something is going to go down here. You might meet someone, have a conversation, find some miniscule nugget of truth, get a phone number.
It looks like 2026 is making a late burst for recognition. This from Amos, the Dexys album, and the Eels album are little bits of manna falling from the sky. And not a moment too soon.
