(Self-released, digital)
After too many days spent carting too many wheelbarrows’ worth of foraged stones across my sister’s yard and strong-manning the haul into two garden beds roughly the proportions of André the Giant’s grave, I had a very literal, very red, picture in mind as I turned to Ian Steinberg’s latest release, The Bleeding Days.
My arms and legs were riddled with slashes, scrapes and the obtrusive itch of a million mosquito bites — everything that hid my skin under another layer of hurt. And the record seemed to speak to that.
“Peeling back / layer by layer / this thin skin of mine,” Steinberg chants in the ethereal opening of the album’s lead track, “Onions.” Like a good panacea, Steinberg’s clear voice upends the silence of suffering’s aftermath for a deeper look inside himself. “‘Cause I’m a coward / and I’m looking for someone,” he continues, singing with a buoyancy that juxtaposes the album’s undercurrent of existential bewilderment. In the track’s final lines, Steinberg invokes the titular allium metaphor with poetic concision and imagery: “When they’re raw / onions burn.”
The Bleeding Days marks Steinberg’s fourth release in less than a decade, and the Burlington folk musician flexes his classically trained muscles throughout the album. Each track evinces richly textured, psychedelic orchestrations from folk-inspired melodies, emotive digital effects, and top-notch performances from Steinberg and a lengthy cast of the Queen City’s heavy hitters.
Founder of the VT Music Lab, drummer Ezra Oklan delivers a spacious, hard-hitting pocket groove to the introspective slow burn “The Forest.” Overtop, Matt LaRocca’s stunningly understated four-part string arrangement soars wistfully around Steinberg’s youthful vocals, especially when he sings the song’s Jungian refrain: “What broke you is what traps you in.”
Aptly titled, The Bleeding Days sees Steinberg opening up deep-seated wounds, purging despair through creation and reinhabiting his sense of self. While his confessions sidestep specificity in favor of abstraction, Steinberg’s lyrics evoke modern-day feelings of dissociation. Still, in his songwriting, it’s clear that all is not lost — nor is his meditation on human experience one very long, very down-tempo funeral dirge.
That’s because Steinberg’s musical style is chock-full of experimental instrumentation, dynamic harmonies and shape-shifting arrangements. At once unique and familiar, The Bleeding Days delivers a freewheeling sonic landscape that’s evocative of Los Angeles indie-rock darlings Local Natives.
“I wanted to create something that feels like a journey,” Steinberg says in the album’s press release. “It’s about embracing change and exploring the space between comfort, identity and self-perception.”
A testament to the bewildering experience of being alive, wounds and all, Steinberg’s latest work illuminates the invisible space between the dreamworld and the real world, where pushing beyond the bounds of earthly suffering can bring about the raw materials needed for something beautiful to grow.
The Bleeding Days is available at iansteinberg.bandcamp.com and on all major streaming services.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2025.
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