When listening to Seattle art-pop duo Glass Heart String Choir, their music can often bed down deep inside you; such is its expressive quality. Their creations seem heartfelt and intuitive. For me, their music sits alongside the likes of My Brightest Diamond, Paper Beat Scissors or the art-pop / avant-folk chamber music of Lou Rogai (Lewis and Clarke). On Wednesday, July 21, 2021, they return with their new single, California which finds them shifting to a lighter and more intimate delivery. We have the pleasure of sharing the accompanying video below.
Wrapped in warm, cinematic strings, airy siren choirs, and yearning lead vocals, California invites us to pause as we begin reaching out again for the things we love and missed during our collective isolation and consider how much they, and we, have changed.
Filled with a sense of longing, the song begins in warm orchestral depths, with Ian Williams delivering the song’s hook, “Do you remember?” in delicate yet sanguine tones, setting us up for the tug-of-war between fond recollection, consolation, and sorrow that permeates the compact 2:30 song, floating upon multi-instrumentalist and producer Katie Mosehauer’s elegant violin melodies and choral soundscapes. All of this is captured perfectly by Mosehauer (with assistance from Ryan J. Salva) in the accompanying video.
They tell us that the video was filmed with speciality lenses that accentuate light and refract and reflect the edges of our visual field and that the video serves as a metaphor for myth, hallucination, mirage; a cognate of the heart imagined, speculated, remembered, both in stunning detail and hazy, alluring beauty.
Find out more:
https://glassheartstringchoir.bandcamp.com/