For nearly two decades, Kansas City based artist Heidi Lynne Gluck has lent her considerable skills as a multi-instrumentalist—piano, keyboards, guitar, bass, harmonica, accordion, lap steel, melodica, the list goes on—to over thirty records from artists including Some Girls, Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos, Lily & Madeleine, Simrit and the Roseline. Remarkably, none of those records was her own. Finally, in 2015, inspired by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young,“her Holy Trinity”of artistic brethren who shared her Canadian origins, she released her first solo EP in 2015, The Only Girl In The Room. Since then, she’s been hard at work on Pony Show, her full length debut, which she produced, composed and record, and which comes out on Lotuspool Records on August 26^th.

Today, Elmore is premiering the first single from the record, “Mercury Rising,” a track about escaping disaster a mere second before it destroys you completely. The upbeat, breezy arrangement- with galloping percussion and jangling keys- keeps the mood light, but the haunting lyrics keep your mind locked onto the reality of the song’s theme—the kind of hopefulness that only comes amidst despair. Gluck’s voice is high and bright, lending her an air both assertive and a tad mischievous. “”Mercury Rising” is the fever pitch before disaster strikes,” Gluck says of the track. “Watching the explosion in my rearview mirror as I make a narrow escape. Sticking it out just a little longer than is safe, then delighting in the “wings rising up like fire from my skin” to pull me out of a bad scene.” On her accidental inspiration, she adds, ““It wasn’t intended, but the recording turned out to be a Heidi version of Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s “Some Velvet Morning” crossed with Johnny Cash’s “Ghost Riders In The Sky.””

You can purchase Pony Show on August 26th. Listen to “Mercury Rising” below.

– Emilee Gorshe