It might be easy to say that William Fitzsimmons is a weaver of lullabies; in fact, the title of this album almost clinches it. Goodnight snuggles in cozily next to other neo-folk craftsmen like Iron and Wine and Sun Kil Moon; it plays like an acoustic music box, largely free of percussion, twinkling with curiously intricate rhythms both gentle and quiet. The harmonies are beatific; the vocals often tremulous and hushed to near-whisper. It is blue and beautiful.

But these songs aren’t lullabies; not really. It’s a subtle difference, but Fitzsimmons doesn’t seem to want to sing you to sleep, nor does he really feel everything’s going to be okay. Goodnight is like a person with a heavy conscience, slipping into bed with you in the middle of the night and hoping to jostle you awake.

In this way, the title is a concession to the listener only; a pleasantry. The narrator of these songs can’t sleep. Fitzsimmons’ lyrics, on both this release and his previous, Until When We Are Ghosts, are not exactly confessional– more like confidential. The songs possess the type of hyper self-aware insights and observations that are usually only able to be summoned during restless midnights under the stars, when people find themselves beset by the ghosts of their lost loves, their disappointments and weightless melancholy. The source of the distress is not entirely abstract: these are songs about death and waiting; lost love and sorrow; they are full of abandoned wardrobes and empty beds, even when we’re not explicitly told so. We can feel it. In this way, the narrators in Fitzsimmons’ songs are like ghosts themselves, wandering houses and places now empty, whispering words that the right people, we suspect, may never hear. While the music itself means to ascend, Fitzsimmons’ voice and words represent the part of us that is earthbound. The two may pull away from each other, but the bond never breaks.

The result is an album that deftly balances hope and sadness with an overriding theme of timeliness– i.e., last chances. And the uniting characteristic of those who find themselves habitually sitting awake while the rest of us are dreaming– if you pry hard enough– is that they always think they’re on their last chance. There is that pervading sense of loneliness in both thought and action (or lack thereof);  perhaps “Goodnight” is the only word in the language of surrender that truly makes any sense.

Even the artwork for the album— a ladder ascending up to a high platform on which there sits a house, smoke rising from the chimney and a light shining in the window— seems to suggest that in his music he is defying some natural state of isolation; but who’s in the house? Fitzsimmons, his many narrators, or those characters in the peripheries of his songs? Perhaps it’s the listener. In any case, it’s a simple, effective image that suggests the desire to bridge a distance through simple means. But there is no need for something as crude as a ladder. The music, in a word, floats.