Pete Price’s latest single, “Better Angels,” unfolds like a letter written but never sent; a tender, trembling artifact of longing and regret. Taken from his 2024 album Pictures in Time, the song feels less like a polished performance and more like a private confession you happen to overhear, full of the kinds of doubts and hopes most of us carry quietly inside.
At its core, “Better Angels” is about the quiet bravery it takes to reach back toward something you fear is already lost. Price steps into the shoes of a man who, after wrestling with his own guilt and loneliness, finally picks up the phone to call an old love. But what he gets is not reconciliation… it’s her voicemail. In that unresolved moment, Price captures something essential about human vulnerability: the willingness to try, even when the odds are long.
There’s an unforced simplicity to the song’s arrangement: acoustic guitar tracing the spine of the melody, soft piano and violin sketching out the emotional landscape. Price’s voice carries a lived-in warmth, every syllable steeped in experience. He’s not just playing a character here. He’s lived these doubts, these nights spent pacing, wondering whether to press “call” or let the past rest.
Lyrically, “Better Angels” doesn’t lean into drama or grandiosity. Instead, it draws power from its restraint: “Look inside your heart / In the place our love had started long ago / Face the danger.” In a few simple lines, Price distills the fragile hope that maybe — just maybe — there’s still a path back to something good.
Pictures in Time chronicles a life’s journey with remarkable emotional clarity, and “Better Angels” feels like a pivotal stop along that road.. a reckoning point where forgiveness, fear, and grace collide. Price’s talent lies in making the internal external, giving shape to feelings that usually live unnamed in the corners of our hearts.
Like the work of fellow travelers such as John Prine, Mary Chapin Carpenter, or Jason Isbell, Price’s music doesn’t rush to resolution. He honors the tension between wanting and knowing better, between hope and memory. In “Better Angels,” there’s no final answer, no triumphant reconciliation. Instead, we’re left suspended in the echo of that unanswered call — and somehow, in that unresolved space, we find something quietly extraordinary.
Pete Price reminds us that sometimes just the act of reaching out, imperfect, uncertain, vulnerable. is itself an act of grace. And in today’s noisy, rushed world, that small, stubborn act feels nothing short of heroic.
–Anne Morris
