Brooklyn record label Mexican Summer have been issuing singles under its Looking Glass series which “focuses on the human condition as reflected through chance and destined encounters. Mirroring the tenets of Mexican Summer’s ten plus years of supporting adventurous music, Looking Glass looks inward to artists close to the label’s core, and outward to familiar names not far from the family tree, to encourage discovery, diversity, and collaboration.”
It is through this series that we were introduced to Rose Pedals and the work Lisa/Liza. Lisa/Liza is the songwriting project of Portland, ME singer and guitarist Liza Victoria. She released an album in 2020 via Orindal which was written while dealing with chronic illness. She adds “When I was actively writing in these last two years, it was often in my strongest moments of healing, which has made this album a different process for me than others before it. The times when I felt well enough to sit with music allowed me a new kind of joy, because of these struggles with health. My vision and hope for this collection of songs is they would allow room for the listener to find their own interpretations, similar to how someone might make a quilt where each piece holds personal connection but in its use it takes on additional shape.”
Of her new single Rose Pedals, she says:
“‘Rose Pedals’ is a song about the balance of learning to find calm through very difficult things, while also at the same time becoming aware of my relationship to minimizing my own pain and suffering. How these two things can create a sort of cyclical cycle and trying to break out of that at a time that has added its own layers of isolation and suffering to all of our individual and collective lives. The imagery of waiting for mail at the mailbox and engaging in rituals like tea to maintain connection and meaning, and in whatever way we can, is very real to me. This practice of reaching out, very central to this moment in time, is also something that we can learn from, and something that I am learning, was always needed. This song hopes to express that realization.”
Available via Bandcamp: https://lisalizas.bandcamp.com/track/rose-pedals