Song Premiere: Mama's Broke "How it Ends"

Lisa Maria’s mournful, spry fiddling ushers us into what Canadian duo Mama’s Broke (Maria and Amy Lou Keeler) calls “an old-fashioned break-up, heartbreak country song.”

The duo wrote the song, off their new album Narrow Line (out May 13 on Free Dirt Records), “in a post-breakup haze” during Covid lockdown in Montreal.

Amy Lou’s bright banjo picking imitates Maria’s fiddle lines, creating a cascading instrumental bed on which the duo lays its vocals. The singer croons about “all those nights you wouldn’t dance with me” or the time “you left me on the hilltop/to mourn alone the passing of my friend.”

With a lover’s hindsight, she proclaims “she should have known then” that her lover was going to leave her. Sprightly fiddle and banjo spiral toward the climax when the singer affirms that “even when it was bad, you were the best I’ve ever had.”

“How It Ends” ruminates on the universal feeling that, no matter how hurt you are, when a relationship ends, it’s hard to believe anyone will ever live up to your former lover.

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“How it Ends” is on Mama’s Broke new album Narrow Line (out May 13 on Free Dirt Records).