- 歌曲
- 时长
简介
"There’s nothing sweeter than the pure, honest music, that runs deep into your soul. When you have the pleasure of hearing Minor Birds…the chaotic world around you melts away." - Our City Radio “Minor Birds is nothing but major. Eerie crystal clear vocals....” - 360 Magazine ----------------------------------------------- “Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic.” - attributed to Frida Kahlo The first lines from singer-songwriter/pianist Chelsea Wilde’s (aka Minor Birds) moving track “The Alchemist” (from the EP of the same name) explore this quote’s sentiment, but with a thought-provoking new twist. Downwardly marching piano arpeggios are streaked with creeping melancholic cello. Funereal. Solemn. Haunting. Emotional. Captivating. Then, Wilde breaks the instrumental trance, as the first lines of her intimate, stark mezzo-soprano vocals enter the soundscape. “Don’t look at me like that. Like I’m made of magic. You’ll grow out of it. They always do.” Wilde’s vocals begin softly, introduced with a melancholic hush then, as the emotional landscape builds, these pleas turn to wailing demands - culminating into a string of piercingly pure, loudly crystal-clear notes of bombast. The song was written after a series of intense, but seemingly “failed” relationships. “When I wrote this song I was in a place where that [magic] quote irked me. I had come to this conclusion that ‘magic’ is a thing we grow out of. Pedestals are things to fall from. I didn’t want to be looked at like magic anymore,” Wilde explains. “I wanted to be looked at like a person. A person with faults. A person who wouldn’t always live up to expectation. A person who wasn’t always entertaining. Not some mystical entity.” Wonderfully intense, haunting, and hypnotic in its intentional simplicity, “The Alchemist” EP finds Wilde exploring life’s mysticism, darkness and lore. While previous Minor Birds releases have been excitingly varied in musical form and style (indie-pop, doom-folk, electronica, guitar-heavy grunge), this interconnect sonic trio fully showcases Wilde’s pianist pedigree and otherworldly vocal talent. It also has an expansiveness. Wilde composed the backbone of the tracks after nearly two years of touring the U.S. and being on never-ending open roads. This gave her ample opportunity to sit with her thoughts and become one with her intrinsic musical instincts. The introspective, intimate mood and somber, soulful lyrics of the EP are a result. The songs were originally recorded in one sitting and flowed into one another as part of a continuous, interconnected whole and were later mixed as separate individual tracks. Wilde explains the process, “I don’t like spending a ridiculous amount of time tracking anything. So, after a few minutes of Russ checking and arranging mics, I sat down at the piano. Fifteen minutes later, we ended up with all of the piano work that is now on the record, including an instrumental piece that, prior to the session, wasn’t fully complete.” Complementing Chelsea’s powerhouse performance, gorgeous cello ambiance was woven into the mood by Devon McClive along with additional percussion accents, skillfully delivered by Russell Arteaga. A classically-trained pianist and self-taught multi-instrumentalist, Chelsea Wilde’s ease behind the keyboard is apparent, as demonstrated by the instrumental “Sinners & Saints”. The melody marches with an almost hypnotic affect, conjuring up an atmosphere of determination, or perhaps a foreshadowing of foreboding mountains to climb or hazards to avoid on the horizon. Album closer “Letters to Mary Toft” reintroduces Wilde’s incredible vocal instrument. The track is an exercise in the art of storytelling, a style that has characterized Wilde’s previous work. While touring, Wilde had discovered a podcast about a bizarre 18th Century woman named Mary Toft. In 1726, after a miscarriage, Ms. Toft reportedly began “giving birth to rabbits”. Doctors examined her, and after three months of these rabbit births she was taken to London to be examined more closely. It wasn’t until someone was caught her sneaking a rabbit into her room that it was deemed a hoax. Obsessed with the story and its strangeness, Wilde wrote the track to explore how - from the beginning of time - people have constantly strived to find a semblance of magic or divine explanation for things they don’t understand. In Wilde’s retelling, Mary became a Saint, and this quirky playful song was born.