Riley Cotton
Audio Feed
Old State House Square
Hartford
Aug. 4, 2026
The last time I saw Riley Cotton was nearly two years ago, when she was relatively new and a featured artist performing with The Bargain. She returned to Audio Feed in downtown Hartford as a solo act, on the first Tuesday of the last month with weather befitting an outdoor performance.
I don’t often re-read my articles after they’re published (the fun is in writing them), but this is a good opportunity to take stock of my own growth as well. After all, I was relatively new to being a professional critic when I saw Cotton. At the time, I wrote,
Riley is a relative newcomer to performing live. She’s been at it for almost two years after being discovered singing karaoke in a bar. She comes by her musical talent honestly, though, as both her father and brother are drummers.
I openly admit that Riley Cotton was much better at singing two years ago than I was at writing about singing. But I’ve learned some new words in the meantime. That's a good thing, because Riley is now filling almost a whole hour with original music that deserves attention and praise.
Cotton’s music is, in a word, soothing. She played her acoustic guitar Tuesday like a lullaby, shifting cords and sounds that turned the blazing midsummer afternoon into a dream state where the hustle and bustle of downtown melted away. That’s not to say that her music put anyone to sleep. On the contrary, Cotton used the quiet, melodic qualities of her voice to disarm listeners, allowing for the emotion of her lyrics to penetrate deeply. Take the first few lines of her song “Adoration”:
I found a fortune teller/in the corner of a flea market
She told me I would have a child/and good things soon would come
Prosperity was over used/insisted I was overdue
For somebody to come around/and make their adoration known
What I like about Cotton’s lyrical choices is that she leaves the meaning up to interpretation. I heard the longing for a love that will never betray or stray, the kind that can come only from a child. While the “somebody” could be the future parent of the child, the song reminded me too much of my own relationship with my son. She doesn’t load her music with romantic references or overbearing love; that quietness of affection lets it apply to so many different kinds of relationships.
Riley uses her music to tell stories in a way that few artists can. The song “Free Man in Utah” started off sounding like a usual country-style ode to the lone man chasing his dreams come hell or high water. The melancholy of Riley’s voice was the first hint that this isn’t a typical song. The free man writes songs no one hears, mourns a love he’ll never have, and chases possessions he’ll never own. The very last line of the song, “With my wisdom and wasted rhymes/I’ll have learned it don’t mean nothin',” completes the subversion, revealing that freedom and solitude can be their own kind of trap.
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Finally, good weather on a Tuesday! Jamil goes to see the last karaoke of the summer in Keney Park.
