You may know LA singer-songwriter Zella Day from last year's Dan Auerbach-produced Where Does the Devil Hide EP, or from working with working with Lana Del Rey and Weyes Blood on a cover of Joni Mitchell's "For Free." Day and Weyes Blood's Natalie Mering formed a bond working on that Joni cover and have continued collaborating since, resulting in this terrific new single, "Holocene."
Mering co-produced "Holocene" and sings backup, too. Drenched in lush harmonies, strings, vibraphone and groovy bass, the song has a distinct late-'60s West Coast sunshine pop/psych feel, recalling The Free Design or cult duo Wendy & Bonnie. Says Zella:
Over the last year I have found myself living in two conflicted mental states. Days where I’m impassioned,so many words and thoughts surrounding our current climate extending throughout my being that it feels like a fire is burning in my skull. Hope flashes in the distance of a darkness unparalleled to anything I’ve experienced in my own lifetime, maybe there is a song in that flash of hope if I can catch it in time. The other reality is emptiness, a complete loss for words. Exhaustion. Loneliness. Sometimes loneliness becomes a giant casting a long shadow that I can’t outrun, I forget what the sun looks like and so I forget the sun. I learned not to be too hard on myself in these moments, ultimately trusting that the motivation to create would eventually come back to me. “Holocene” was the rain that fell. It’s a collection of thoughts, micro and macro, a song for the interpersonal relationship between the world inside and outside of ourselves. A “we are everything and nothing at all” mantra.
It's genuinely gorgeous stuff and you can check out the lyric video below.
"Holocene" is the first song shared from Day's new album which is still being finished up. Stay tuned.
In other news, Weyes Blood has said that her follow-up to Titanic Rising (our #1 album of 2019) will likely not come out till 2022, but hopefully we'll get something this year.
