Julia Greenberg’s “Leaves” feels like a song written after the first shock has passed, when grief has stopped taking up the whole room but still changes the light in it. The track is warm, even hopeful, though it never treats loss as something easy to tidy away. That is the part that makes it work. Greenberg lets the song move forward without pretending the feeling behind it has been neatly resolved.
There is a lived-in intelligence to the writing. “Leaves” knows how foolish memory can make a person feel, especially when the season has already changed and some part of you is still standing in the old weather. The line, “There’s nothing dumber, than the girl who sings September Song in summer,” catches that perfectly. It is funny, a little cutting, and sad because it recognizes the private embarrassment of holding onto something past its time. Greenberg does not overplay the line. She lets the humour carry some of the ache.
The recording matters because it sounds close to the people making it. Recorded live at Chrometop Studios, the song has the feel of musicians leaving space for each other rather than decorating a singer-songwriter track from the outside. Jeremy Chatzky’s upright bass gives it a steady, human body, Will Holshouser’s accordion brings a weathered softness, Bob Perry’s electric guitar adds small edges of colour, and the drums and percussion keep the song moving without pushing it too hard. The arrangement is gentle, but it has shape. It knows where the song needs support and where it should be left alone.
Greenberg’s voice sits at the centre with that same balance. She does not sound like she is trying to prove the song’s honesty. She sings it plainly enough that the details can land on their own, with a kind of seasoned warmth that makes the track feel personal without becoming overly exposed. That fits what she says about Born Sentimental being a reaction to screens, filters, and the false versions of ourselves that get projected outward. “Leaves” feels connected to that rejection of polish. It sounds like a song made by someone more interested in truth than presentation.
The video gives the song a strong visual companion by placing it inside a small-town schoolhouse frozen in time. That setting could have become too obvious in a weaker treatment, but here it works because the song is already concerned with what remains after people and moments have moved on. The schoolhouse holds that feeling physically, the stillness, the old rooms, the sense of a place that remembers more than it explains. Directed by Greenberg and edited by Nico Greenberg, the video does not force the image into sentiment. It lets the space do its quiet work.
What makes “Leaves” a strong entrance into Born Sentimental is how carefully it handles feeling without becoming careful in a dull way. The song has humour, grief, memory, and release moving through it, but none of those pieces flatten the others. It is soft in sound, though not weak in construction. It is hopeful, though not in a way that rushes past the loss. Greenberg lets the song sit in the harder middle place, where a person knows something is gone and still has to keep walking.
By the end, “Leaves” feels less like a clean goodbye than a small act of loosening the grip. That is where its quiet force is. Julia Greenberg takes a familiar image, leaves falling, seasons changing, and keeps it from turning into decorative sadness by making it specific, funny, and lived through. The song has the ease of a live performance and the weight of someone who has earned that ease the hard way.
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