We have all become experts in the imbalance of uncertainty these days, newly accustomed tocanceling plans and tentatively rescheduling them for some future we can only imagine. ForAustin Crane—theruminative songwriter, riveting guitarist, and singular voice performing andcollaborating as Valley Maker—such a sense of uncertainty has emerged as his steadfastcompanion these last few years, a period of profound transition. This flux is the anchor forCrane’s fourth and best album as Valley Maker, the gorgeous and felicitousWhen the DayLeaves.Early in 2019, Crane and his wife, Megan, decided it was time to leave Seattle. South Carolinanatives, they’d been in Seattle for nearly a decade while he pursued a doctorate in humangeography at the University of Washington, and she worked as a midwife. As Summer 2019ended, they prepared to head east to Columbia, SC, rejoining a deep community of friends andmoving into a century-old home in need of big love.Still, major questions loomed: Would they,just then past 30, like it enough to stay, to start a new life? And what did it mean to go home?Driven as it is by departure,When the Day Leavesmarks the arrival of Valley Maker as atrustworthy narratorfor these shaky times. Crane synthesizes these complex feelings into themagnetic first single, “No One Is Missing.” A song about reckoning with self-doubt whilesearching for community, “No One Is Missing” acknowledges the tension inherent in thoseideas,especially during our polarized era. The swaying “Branch I Bend” is a workaday anthemand an ode to whatever goodness you find, to recognizing grace in a world that can seem starvedfor it.All these thoughts are rendered with newfound lyrical richness,balancing intimate tidbits withuniversal ambiguity.Crane raises questions only to let them linger, shaping clouds ofgeographical and political specifics and asking you todrawout the meaning. During“Mockingbird,” he sings of moving to his Columbia home and planting a new tree, tiny detailsthat induce an imaginative diorama for the listener—where does life go from here?In the months before recording began,Austinconvened with producer Trevor Spencer andlongtime harmonizing partner Amy Godwin for sessions in Portland and Seattle,teasing out thealbum’s interwoven arrangements and meticulous vocal harmonies.Then, in November 2019,Crane decamped from Columbia to the Pacific Northwest for a three-week session in the woodsoutside of Woodinville, a small town northeast of Seattle at the foot of the Cascades. He stayedin the loft of Spencer’s Way Out Studio, the collaborators sealing themselves off in a horse barn-turned-recordingspacelike kids at summer camp, just as winter’s mist closed in.Thetime commitment is a crucial component ofWhen the Day Leaves.For 46 minutes, you feellike you’re sitting with Crane in an intricate, unified sound-world of his design. He offloads hisobservations about our tangled thicket of hope and fear, aspiration and exasperation.When the Day Leavesis an uninterrupted sequence of reflections about the generational limbo ofbeing awed by and worried for this world. The anxiety of uncertainty—always part of life but now seemingly omnipresent—can be vexing, a reality these songs acknowledge. Crane, as hesings at one point, is fully “aligned with my blues.” But these songs also affirm that life is anendless opportunity for renewal, for trying again. As with dusk, when the day leaves and “tries tostart again” amida riot of expiring colors, we eventually learn what comes next.