* I’m Ready *is a quietly powerful meditation on the weight of release, the sort of song that feels like you’re having the late night conversation you’ve been wanting to have with your most honest self. You get sucked into the first shimmering guitar notes and from there Danielle Schroeder's rich, lived in vocals ache with hard won clarity as the track carries you into its warm, weary wisdom. Reference the central tension at the base of the song — want versus actually letting it go — in that the arrangement itself is a river, flowing gently and irrevocably towards its conclusion, like a slow piano, unhurried percussion.
Aaron Klassen puts together the instrumentation with understated elegance never overwhelming but always feeding the core. What it does so differently is there’s a rawness here — it never dips into melodrama, instead reveals itself with quiet. The track’s not so much as an experiment but a simple telling of a fact and the video’s appropriately vintage simplicity mirrors that.
It exhaled its pain and isn’t one to shout. Schroeder has gifted us all in making each persons catharsis feel universal that growth does not happen all at once, it comes in many large and small chunks. A balm – and a nudge– for anyone who has ever held on to what hurts because letting go hurts so much more. Listen close. Maybe it will just set free something.
