Jon Gold’s new single, “Lullaby for a Dream,” is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic. For a moment, it’s like finding a pristine, hand-drawn map of the Outer Hebrides tucked inside a book on modern architecture.
The song is built on a premise of profound and gentle sorrow: a message of love to a daughter the artist never had. Sung with a kind of luminous clarity by Ditty Wish, the piece sidesteps simple sentimentality. Her voice is the compass needle here, steady and sure, while Gold’s piano provides not a rhythmic framework but something closer to the soft earth beneath the melody’s mossy stones. The track is an offering to an absence, a space filled with a vow of unwavering protection and peace.
It’s a strange thing to be moved by a love so specific and so imagined. The piece isn’t asking for pity; it’s asking for witness. It bypasses the brain and goes straight for that little cabinet in your chest where you keep unresolved aches and fierce, quiet hopes. The effect is deeply calming, but with a slight, unshakeable chill, the way a truly silent forest feels both peaceful and anciently alive.
What does it mean to build a home, out of melody and air, for a love that has nowhere else to go?
