The Suitcase Junket, To Go On

(Bad Chef Records/Symphonic, CD, digital, vinyl)

“Oh, death, what’s there to say? / … Oh, but death, my friend, walk with me a while.”

Thus begins the new album from Massachusetts singer-songwriter and sonic chameleon Matt Lorenz, aka the Suitcase Junket, and thus begins a lonely yet musically gorgeous trip through the halls of grief and memory.

Lorenz wrote the songs on his new album, To Go On, in response to the death of his sister and frequent musical collaborator, Kate Lorenz, who died in 2022 at the age of 42. Over the course of 11 tracks, he moves through the stages of his grief, from “More Time,” a lament about how quickly things disappear, to the reluctant acceptance of “I Know,” on which Lorenz wonders: “Why are we always losing what we need?” The mystery of death is everywhere on To Go On, as is the need to make peace with absence.

The record finds Lorenz back at his roots as a one-man band. His sobriquet, the Suitcase Junket, derives from his use of found items and repaired instruments to create his brand of off-kilter indie-rock, roots and folk music. He expanded that sound on 2020’s The End Is New, a fuller sonic work, produced by Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, that colored in all the margins and offered a slicker version of the music.

To Go On is once again a universe of sounds from one man, from the muted, ghostly percussion on “Yardsale” to the reverb-drenched guitar on “Blindside Memory.”

For a record that stares directly into the abyss, it rarely feels somber or morose. Rather than delving straight into loss and misery like Mount Eerie’s haunting A Crow Looked at Me, or questioning the very nature of death and departure like David Bowie’s final opus, Blackstar, To Go On picks up the pieces to find the sunlight, all while tightly holding on to memory. The record’s sound reflects this positivity, with anthemic indie rock on “Born Wolves” and the raucous country jam “Silver Linings.”

“I thought I heard you call me / across the wired empty of every burning memory / that made us who we were,” Lorenz sings to his sister on “Don’t Worry.”

“Don’t worry, Katie / we can hold it all together / Don’t worry, Katie / we’re holding on / You don’t have to worry anymore,” he promises her over a softly plucked fingerstyle guitar, with barely-there strings giving shades of color to the ballad. Death is far from the main character of To Go On, but the specter lingers behind every note.

Grief may not be rare subject matter for folk music, but Lorenz approaches it in an idiosyncratic and utterly human way. To Go On is available now on major streaming services. The Suitcase Junket performs at Zenbarn in Waterbury Center on Sunday, November 15.

This article appears in October 28 • 2026.

Music editor Chris Farnsworth has written countless albums reviews and features on Vermont's best musicians, and has seen more shows than is medically advisable. He's played in multiple bands over decades in the local scene and is a recording artist in his own right. He can often be found searching for the perfect soft pretzel or listening to a podcast about the X-Men.