Tift Merritt - Time And Patience

2025

As the responsibilities of parenthood and academia keep Tift Merritt occupied, she's been digging into her archives for fans eager for new music. In 2025, she released a 20th anniversary reissue of 2004's superb Tambourine (a year late, but she's been busy), and as a companion, she also compiled Time and Patience, a collection of unheard home recordings, demos, and live tracks. The connection to Tambourine comes in the form of five "Kitchen Recordings" of tunes that would later appear on the album, featuring just Merritt's voice and guitar (or piano). The emotional intimacy of her songs has always been one of the most moving aspects of her music, and these bare-bones recordings are beautiful and striking; while they might be tapes she made at home, she sings with the same authority and passion that she would bring to her final studio takes.

The purity of her instrument on "Write My Ticket," "Stray Paper," and "Plainest Thing" allows her to give her Joni Mitchell influences a moment in the spotlight, and what she learned from Mitchell serves her very well. The LP's other five tracks are previously unreleased: "Broad Daylight" and "Avalon Pier" are only slightly sparer than the Kitchen Recordings but similarly effective, "4th Street Windowsill" is a live recording of Merritt and her horn-enhanced band sounding powerfully soulful in the Southern style, the title track is a loose take where she is accompanied by piano and drums, and "Last Day I Knew What to Do" closes the set with a charging rocker (recorded during the Tambourine sessions) that proves she can belt it out strong when she wants to. 

The previously unheard songs are certainly up to Merritt's usual standards of quality, and while this was assembled from odds and ends, this is very much a Tift Merritt album in that it's full of great songs sung and played with skill and inspiration. She seems incapable of making a bad album, and if Time and Patience is more for fans than the uninitiated, until she gets around to writing and recording a new album, this is a holding action that's full of affecting moments and welcome surprises. 

Mark Deming