Lily Seabird can create songs that sound like they’ve lived in that form years before anyone else hears them. On ‘Lightspheres on Their Way’, the Vermont songwriter stretches this talent to near-seven minutes, blooming from something rather intimate and a little uneasy out into a bigger release.

The title track of her new record sits in an odd place between indie rock and folk, but neither really touches on the things that make it work. For much of the opening half, Seabird gives herself space to breathe, her guitar rough around the edges, her voice restrained, allowing the feel of the thought process to unfold in real time before the rest of the band shows up.

It is a slow build, but not one that feels like it is killing time.

The word is Seabird’s own and across the wider record she uses ‘lightspheres’ to describe everything from UFOs through to memories and dreams, to people and the unknowable forces that seem to push us from one point in our lives to another. For this particular song, she has described it more simply as being about loving somebody over a great distance.

That looseness helps; no need for the listener to understand an elaborate mythology before the song makes sense. ‘Lightsphere’ can be whatever presence keeps drifting back into view, whether that is a person, a memory or something harder to name.

Seabird’s voice is particularly good at carrying that ambiguity; there is still the rasp that has characterised her earlier work, but she does not lean into it. Instead she sounds unusually clear and vulnerable against the guitar, the eventual expansion of the arrangement hitting harder.

At 6:43, “Lightspheres on Their Way” could easily have become indulgent. Instead, its length is the point. The song needs somewhere to travel.

The shift in its second half moves it from a solo folk-rock track towards something much broader and anthemic, guitars swelling, the rhythm section giving it weight, what initially sounded private now huge. The transition never feels like a cheap quiet-loud trick because Seabird has spent enough time stretching out the song before allowing it to break open.

There is also a specific influence behind that ending. Seabird has said she was thinking about former Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland and his song “I Will Take You Home” as she worked out the arrangement with Daniel and Rick. The final outro was improvised during recording and kept.

You can hear why; the outro feels less constructed than discovered, wandering without losing direction, gradually transforming the uncertainty of the first few minutes into something warmer.

That is where “Lightspheres on Their Way” feels strongest: Seabird never neatly resolves the things that the song is reaching for, she just allows it to become bigger than where it started.

For a track concerned with distance, memory and whatever invisible forces keep pushing people through their lives, that seems about right.