Amanda Winterhalter performs at Town Hall in August for her single release show for “What’s This Death.” // Photo by Will Abzu

What’s This Death is a feeling of sweet darkness. Amanda Winterhalter, a local singer-songwriter, has taken my love for the blues to new depths, as she talks love and absence throughout her latest release.

The pull to six feet in What’s this Death takes you for a ride every foot. Playing with metaphors, Winterhalter uses the idea of a reel to talk about being hooked to attraction. As she states on second track “Reel:” “held my face to the mirror / it doesn’t look like me / looks like a beauty I’d kill for,” she finds her true love is herself. She sees she is all she needs to love. She commands to be lifted from the depths she has fallen into. As a listener, you will be enticed by her controlled crescendo and decrescendo in spots that feel like a tug. Her desire to be uplifted comes out through the intensity of the electric guitar and her freeing growl.

On the title track “What’s this Death,” we are dug into the vocals and writing abilities of Winterhalter. We begin to see what falling deeply in love can do to the body. As she explains, it’s deathliness and elation we all long to have.

On “Cemetery Picnic,” Winterhalter sings about the unity of love and being willing to fall, repeating the certainty as she threads her lyrics, “I love him,” through this macabre love story. She grabs the audience’s attention with her slight yodel tone, drawing us in just to pull us under with her.

My favorite of the EP, though, is “Ulysses Hymn,” an ekphrastic piece for the story of Ulysses. As Winterhalter talks on how the feeling of absence of self can feel, she imagines what the journey back home as she becomes Ulysses. The song is a beautiful hymn that will take the darkness you feel in times of wander and lighten your load with just the pure sound of Winterhalter. Angelic in her croon, she creates a feeling of warmth but accountability as she releases the weight, ending the song with the line “I can’t bear the weight of your mercy.”

The EP is so well crafted as Winterhalter broadcasts her lyrical abilities and singing style. Every song is visual and makes the last one that much better as you take the journey of love in this EP. The love comes through as drums and hollow guitars concoct an ominous glory for Winterahalter’s vocals to become air light and heavy at the same time. What’s this Death is a a body of work that planted me in a cemetery and blossomed me out into a garden of hope.