• Courtesy
• Lillian Leadbetter, State of Romance

(Self-released, digital)

Lillian Leadbetter's State of Romance is an anthology of distances. Essentially a concept album, the indie-inflected folk record tours through perspectives of anticipation, presence and reflection in pursuit of considering and maintaining the heady enchantment evoked by the cycles of romance.

Let's start at the end. "I once had been dreaming / that the web that I was weaving / was trailing behind me / and slowly unwinding / with no / with no / silver lining," Lincoln-born Leadbetter sings on "Silver Lining," just before the record closes with a swelling, piano-struck C. The lyric suggests a dejection that would betray an equanimity the album ultimately advances, if the line weren't prefaced with the comforting distance of a dream.

In "American Sweetheart," the narrator's tone is confessional and distressed. We're in the car getting pulled over, nervous and observing. We're reflecting on careless words and heartbreak, pining for a redo. The song sports a country-pop sensibility on a deceptively simple folk foundation. Harmonizing with herself to resplendent effect, Leadbetter takes the corners with the car and leans in, savoring the fleeting apprehension.

Leadbetter drops the angst over the futility of trying to affect the past, and soon "Leo Moon" waxes to unabashed infatuation. The hang-ups are unhung, and the tune becomes a balm for the narrator's own disquiet. "You shouldn't feel haunted," Leadbetter sings, her croon swinging above a swooning pedal steel, played majestically by Ben Rodgers, alongside Jacob Weiss' pensive fiddle.

Much of the record lingers here, suspended in this promised splendor. "What keeps you in a state of romance?" asks the narrator in "State of Romance," voiced by Sophia Cirignano via voicemail. With a doleful harp and mournful hums building soft undulations beneath the ruminating narrator, the unlikely titular centerpiece proposes that romance is the perpetual stimulation of creativity through a sustained "sense of wonder." With this, the album reveals an awareness of itself as engaged in the same creative pursuit: as an encounter or exchange between the voice on one end and the ear on the other, both aware of the distance and both unbothered by it.

"Sophia" demonstrates this equipoise. The moment of passion has crested, and Sophia is in Paris. She still writes love letters "every now and again" but is otherwise committed to a foreign set of circumstances. Reflectively, Leadbetter conveys an almost audible smile as she considers a day in the life of her far-flung friend. Gone is the callow agony of "American Sweetheart," and the surrender to wistfulness welcomes a cool detachment. Trumpet and flügelhorn player Connor Young drives the mood home with his plaintive solo.

While the song borrows from the greatest hits of romantic clichés (Paris, wine and love letters), it wields these simple signifiers to thoughtful effect.

Arriving back at the start, where "Not in the Mood for Heartbreak" begins to build the aforementioned web, we are too enraptured not to succumb. Above a lulling guitar, a clear and moony voice composes a slow seduction that we don't discern until we're already blissfully entwined.

State of Romance is available on all major streaming platforms.