“An outlet for personal exploration, its songs delving back into the past and untying its knots, attempting to make peace with the present.” That’s how we described Camila Ortiz’s Otracami back in September when writing of the single ‘Fold‘. The song served as the ideal introduction to the New York-based artist’s work. “An examination of the contortions people sometimes put themselves through to try to fit into a relationship” which forces itself to confront the past in all of its minutiae. The result was an “almost time-travel style journey back to a very specific moment,” as we put it, following Ortiz leaving a party right through to climbing the stairs to her partner’s apartment later, “and the swirling thoughts and anxieties that it held.”
The single was taken from Otracami’s debut full-length touching the stove coil, and now the album has been released it is clear that a similar level of detail shines across the entire record. Opener ‘in the car’ offers a picture of an overbearing homelife (the only time I could ever really be alone / was after dropping everybody off at home / waiting for the stop sign to turn green / blinking through the high beams”) set to a dappled rhythm, while ‘Stove Coil’ punctuates a sedate, listless lethargy with the sharp violence hinted at in the album’s title. “Spiral glowing red / on the razor’s edge,” Ortiz sings, “a sting and a sweetness / will I feel it.” A strange mixture of pain and pleasure which could represent the entire action of the record. Approaching something which will almost certainly hurt, yet glows alluringly all the same.
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But despite the potential for injury, the process actually grew to achieve healing properties. “Over the course of writing, I often started in an angry or sad place,” Ortiz explains. “But by the end of each song, I was more able to let go, to return to the present.” As though in grasping the iron, its threat is conquered and neutralised. Something apparent in the calm confidence that threads through the songs. Be it in the ostensibly furious ‘Angel’ which instead plays with assured restraint, or ‘Garúa’ with its ability to view a difficult situation with distance and understanding. A mature outlook which suggests that the pain is not winning. As Ortiz concludes: “It felt like growing up in a way, writing and finishing this record.”
Single ‘Pitcher’ encapsulates this mood. Another picture of an almost out-of-body stillness ruptured by a single, visceral image. “I fill the pitcher with hot water / it cracks right down the middle,” Ortiz sings. “Water spills all over the counter / you’re still talking and I’m in the middle / I go somewhere else in times like these.” But as with all of the songs on the record, Otracami returns to this specific moment for a reason. Sensing on some level there is a lesson to be learnt there, or recognising an opportunity to convey an otherwise incommunicable truth.
the clouds shift
I swallow
the air is thick around my head
if there’s a truth in this I need to
find a
way to
show you
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touching the stove coil is out now and available from the Otracami Bandcamp page.
