With the album coming next month on Spirit House Records and Wilbur & Moore Records, Oropendola is back with brand new single, ‘Trust the Sun’, which we have the pleasure of sharing today. A song which turns away from the woozy haze of ‘Knocking Down Flowers’ in favour of something altogether more vivid, from the threaded piano and its poignant clarity to the growing weight of the vocals themselves. All delivered with an almost cyclical pattern which escalates across the runtime, as though in coalescing around itself, the song finds some internal means to grow.

“I often have this fear that there is something inherent in me that is unstable,” Schubert explains of the single. “Hazardous. Unloveable, even. A curse leaving me doomed to forever push my loved ones away. A slippery slope that leaves trust—in others, in myself—wounded at the base.” Written during March 2020, ‘Trust the Sun’ was created in opposition to this anxiety, crystallising as Brooklyn bloomed into its springtime self through the window of the apartment in which Schubert was now mostly confined. “Forsythias, rhododendrons, eastern redbuds, and cherry blossoms were taking turns exploding open as the world was shutting down,” as she continues. “I took long walks on bewilderingly sunny days and found immense comfort tracking the intricacies of spring, noticing the order of the blooms and the alternating cycles of death and rebirth.”

Applying such close observation to human relationships too, Schubert found herself contemplating her own history of friends and lovers, tracing patterns otherwise too intricate or uncomfortable to follow. A process which seemed overwhelming at first, triggering an urge to flee, though instead Schubert channelled the instinct into Oropendola and chose to sit with the emotions she had unearthed. “‘Trust the Sun’ started as a lament, a plea,” she states, “but eventually, it became a mantra.”

Armed with the song as a kind of protection spell, Oropendola once again chooses to embrace transience. Not merely as a coping mechanism, but a way to more fully inhabit the beauty of the world. “Take a breath, plunge into the water, and savor the cherry blossoms before their once-luscious flowers become fragments of pink dust on the earth,” as Schubert says. “Accept that strong green summer leaves turn to fire and crumple with the pinch of a fist, and it’s not just okay, it’s actually beautiful.” And with this beauty comes self-awareness, then patience, kindness. “Over time it became easier to be more generous with my heart, to extend myself outwards more and more, trying not to fear, but rather embrace, the unpredictability and ephemerality of it all. I walked and marvelled, no matter the season, felt it when the sun came out, allowed its light to find space within me, and allowed myself to find more joy spreading it to other people.”

Photos by Chimera Singer 

The post Oropendola – Trust the Sun appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With an agile fluidity of its own, Waiting For The Sky to Speak takes this idea to heart. A collection of songs which dances between the hard binaries of life, be it presence and absence, past and future, life and death, and embraces the ephemeral as a kind of freedom. Only in committing to the pendulum’s motion can we beat the finality at either pole of its swing.

Single ‘Knocking Down Flowers’ is the perfect introduction to the record. A song which came into being when Schubert started her own version of Julia Cameron’s ‘morning pages’ activity from The Artist’s Way, recording improvised pieces each day. “I recorded morning pages #1 soon after a pivotal, complicated, on-and-off relationship reached its end,” Schubert explains. “Round and round we went, addicted to one another, unable to break free of a sticky cycle that prevented us from fully blooming together. That song seed turned into ‘Knocking Down Flowers’ within a few days.”

The intuitive process is perhaps unsurprising given the inherently personal nature of the song. “There was a construction site near my old apartment in South Slope, Brooklyn that the two of us would often pass by,” Schubert continues. “We developed a bit—bittersweet in retrospect—that it was our home:

We would peer through the diamond-shaped opening at the stunted barren landscape beyond and imagine the possibilities. Dirt, trash, patches of weeds, colorful graffiti on the green walls, the droning hum of the Prospect Expressway: our weird little insular paradise. One evening, the site’s door was slightly ajar. We made it inside of our home, for the first and only time, photographing one another, running around and dancing with abandon, beers in hands reaching towards the sky.

The single exists within such a space. Somewhere outside of the present but not quite the past or future either—something like liminal space of a pendulum’s arc. A kind of pocket between periods where consequences are suspended, and nothing is risked in dreaming.

Waiting for the Sky to Speak is out on the 17th March via Spirit House Records and Wilbur & Moore Records and you can pre-order it now from the Oropendola Bandcamp page.

The post Oropendola – Knocking Down Flowers appeared first on Various Small Flames.