Crooked Words #19: Squirrel Flower, Emma Ayzenberg
Squirrel Flower - Reelin
Back in the middle of May, as this blog celebrated its 16th anniversary, we pulled some beautiful songs together for a special mixtape, all selected by artists we've been lucky enough to cross paths with over the years. For her choice, Squirrel Flower's Ella Williams chose an Arthur Russell song, sharing it alongside a few chosen words. "This song makes me float," Ella wrote. "I first heard it 3 years ago in the summer. I was biking around Chicago every day, blasting this song on repeat, floating, soaring, sinking like the sun, rising like the moon."
In just three lines of text she managed to paint a picture that felt lived in; the song rising as the day does, brooding into life, into hours stretched thin like gossamer. Everything in motion, the turning of the spokes, all leading to something more existential, the sun and moon rising; our hearts carried out further than the limits of our own lives.
It's a trick, or indeed a skill, she Ella has always managed to fold into her songs. She does so again, beautifully, enigmatically, on 'Reelin', the first single from her forthcoming new LP, Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going. Released in late August, the album holds eleven new songs and is said to be 'a collage of landscapes and characters' and one where she 'skillfully weaves together a timeless love album'.
If it is indeed a love album, then Reelin hints at the dark underbelly of such a thing, offering a snapshot of its tangled grip, its frayed edges. The song itself mirrors this, the somewhat repetitive nature of its telling bound tightly together with Ella's worn delivery, like the stifling nature of the relationship she sings of: "When I’m 30 I’m gonna have a husband. And a garden and a plan. And good intentions. And good credit. Til bad things call me back again, call me back again."
It's a strange and intoxicating piece of music. It never spirals too far and yet it feels almost impossible to get a grip on. The light of it all seems to constantly shift, landing on specific words and thoughts to highlight them for just a moment, before the clouds pass over them and the sun reappears. It begins in the monotony of tasks to complete, of placing one foot in front of the other, but it ends up scorched by the burden of those thing, in a disjointed plea to something else: "Oh mama I didn’t miss him, but he’s reeling me back again," she repeats.
"This song is my ode to the push and pull of domesticity and unraveling," Ella says of the song. "Leaving and getting reeled back in, over and over and over and over.
Say A Prayer... is available to pre-order now via Bandcamp
Emma Ayzenberg - Another Spring
Preceding its release, Emma Ayzenberg said of her new song that it was "both a melancholic and hopeful message to myself, insisting on the beauty of starting over." That new chapter, artistically speaking at least, reveals itself in the form of brand new work from the LA songwriter, with 'Another Spring' drifting into the season as her first release in more than two years.
To bring this new awakening to life, Ayzenberg gathered up a stellar cast of friends to sit beside her, a backing band that consists of Carly Bond of Meernaa, who co-produced the work alongside Robert Shelton, as well as Gregory Uhlmann on electric guitar, Griffin Goldsmith (Dawes) and Emily Elhaj (Angel Olsen) on drums and bass, and Eliza Petrosyan who adds gentle swathes of slide guitar to the new piece.
For all of that detailed assembling, 'Another Spring' feels suitably, captivatingly unhurried, Ayzenberg's voice sitting as the fascinating focal point in the moments where it takes centre-stage. The whole thing is also somewhat fleeting, the song wrapped up within two-and-a-half minutes of lush layered playing.
But it lingers too; the gracefulness of its delivery, the buried heart straining to pull itself up and out into the light, adds a palpable sense of depth to the whole thing that feels gently but, importantly, wildly gripping. A new lease of life cast in gentle, seasonal light.
Emma has just started a US tour alongside the excellent h. pruz, find the tour dates on Instagram here
Read this post on the GFP blog here
Listen to the GFP 16th anniversary mixtape here
