In This Modern Breath

Elaine Lachica “Tumbleweed”

To think of this music in terms of visual representation: The piano is the tumbleweed, the rest is either the breeze blowing it along, or the empty, wide-open scenery. Lachica’s voice is mannered but highly expressive, fluttering and contracting as the melody swirls around the contours of the chord structure. As much as this song has that quality of direct representation, it’s also an odd, abstracted thing. Listening, I feel like trying to trace its lines, follow them around to find the beginning and the end, but I get lost somewhere, or my attention shifts to some small detail that has me chasing that to its logical conclusion. The song is all a tangle, but it moves so gracefully.

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