The simple ambiguity of Jimmy Steinauer’s “Old Love Song,” quietly waves at an endlessly reliable form.
It feels like an old-timey tune, expressing a love that’s platonic, land-bitten and strummed on a ringing acoustic guitar. It sounds like an old love song to the songwriter/narrator. The details have faded. Its recipient may as well have. It lands like a song to an old love. “Scenes change, friends, they come and go.” There’s a focusing of the lens on something weathered by time.
Like most of the songs on the Lincoln folk singer’s eponymous debut EP, “Old Love Song” rests easy as kind of campfire soundtrack where platitudes and promises are just firelight and the ground you fall asleep on.
Listen to the premiere of “Old Love Song” below: