Lily Vakili has decided to step out from behind the semi-anonymity of the Vakili Band by releasing her new album “Oceans Of Kansas” under her full name. The new music takes her on a more personal direction, and was inspired by her most recent solo tour driving through the continental US with one of her brothers (a former submariner). The album’s title is a nod to the prehistoric inland sea that once covered the Great Plains, and also to Vakili’s own understanding of life as layered, shifting, and filled with fossils of memory. An overnight stop on the tour led Vakili to the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas where, standing before the spectacular remnants of that ancient ocean, Vakili felt the weight and wonder of time collapse.
‘Rocket‘ is an exhilarating ride, chock full of tempo changes and questions where Vakili questions whether a lover found what they were looking for when they left to look for, what? Some unattainable ambition – and was it something worth giving up the “hazy lazy days and sweaty nights”?
