The Brooklyn singer-songwriter navigates the aftermath of grief on his gentle new record.
Grief is a shapeshifter. It looks different to everybody: a lingering ache, a temporary scrape, a heavy phantom limb. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ian Wayne encountered a form of grief he’d never known before after the death of his 3-year-old nephew from leukemia in 2017. He learned about his nephew’s illness while on his very first tour, and, within two weeks, his nephew had died. Now, three years later, as the world tries to synthesize new forms of grief every day, Wayne has released Risking Illness, a sensitive and gentle record that navigates the aftermath of a loss sharpened by Wayne’s sense of forward momentum and humility.
The album’s melancholic, close-knit arrangements of acoustic guitar, piano, and light percussion soften its devastation. Wayne’s level voice and sober pacing allow the record to unfold carefully, prioritizing deeper emotional understanding over split-second eruptions. Though Wayne doesn’t hold himself to all of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, themes of bargaining, depression, and acceptance form most of the album’s foundation. How is it possible to return to a “normal” life after it’s been suddenly cratered by forces beyond your control? Wayne asks questions that simply have no answers.
Mid-tempo jog “Gimme Something” is Wayne’s most hurried track, coasting over layered guitars and a pattering rhythm. He leans the titular request more toward a plea than a demand. Having reached a new low, Wayne introduces a vein of humility on “Gimme Something” that runs through the record. He addresses it directly in the soft, better-days aspirations of “Now Is Was” and promises to “own [his] problems” on opener “Coyote.” Wayne’s admissions of vulnerability sometimes bring an energetic edge to his despair, as if he’s still trying to wheel and deal his way into a better outcome. And when he’s exploring the duller pains of a relationship (“Baby,” “People”), he re-adjusts the commonplace bruises of disagreements and missed connections within his widened perspective.
Above the warm undercurrent of Risking Illness, Wayne uses strategic pauses to highlight the most impactful moments. In “Baby,” he leaves a moment of space between an instrumental break, explicitly declaring the start of a new chapter, relying on a hair’s-breadth of room to make his point land. As he sings, “Baby, I will always love you/In between the times that I do not,” he honors how tender affection can still linger long after the lights have gone out in a relationship.
On “Winter’s,” however, moments of silence feel like daggers, the album’s strongest and most affecting track by far. Singing alone with an acoustic guitar, Wayne fumbles with the loss of his nephew and its circumstances, guilt lacing his voice. He fidgets as if he’s trying to get the math—or any of it—to make sense by looking at it from another angle. An electric guitar slips in before Wayne completes the final line, “Twenty-seven on the day that he died,” and the full-band flourish that seals the track mirrors the busy preventative measures of turning thoughts in another direction before they get too dark. Some grief doesn’t ever go away; it makes room for itself at any size. Risking Illness acknowledges the heartfelt futility of trying to get over it.
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