Lose yourself in Havana Garden, the elegant new single from Janie Price, also known as Bird. This is a thing of fragile beauty; the sweetest of melodies, lilting and ethereal, slowly unfolds as Bird’s velvet-smooth voice blends perfectly with Jane Ellen Bryant’s. Havana Garden is a gorgeously balanced duet, the pair’s feathery voices floating together on heavenly currents over lush strings. Delicate and subtle, the instrumentation, arrangement and vocal performance are exquisite.
The sun-bleached, colour-washed video feels like a memory, transporting us to another time and place as we drift through Bird’s lyrical reflections. There’s a dreamy poetry to her words which takes us to a cemetery in Cuba, where the local people celebrate love instead of dwelling on their grief: “Here amongst the overgrown // Love found a place that it called home.”
Bird says of the song: “I co-wrote this with Texan musician Jane Ellen Bryant on the Austin Florence Alliance camp I hosted at my studio in Italy with House of Songs USA. My lyrics are about a cemetery in Cuba. It’s based on a ‘true’ story that I read in a UK newspaper about how the local people there go to that cemetery to worship love and miracles rather than mourn the dead, after a miracle apparently happened there. A mother was buried with her young child, with the child at her feet, as was local tradition to do. For some reason, they had to exhume the bodies, and when they did, they found the child in the mother’s arms. It was such a sad but beautiful thing to read, and as soon as I finished the article, I sketched the idea for the lyric. I finished writing it with Jane, who played guitar, and it actually made me cry. I love that Jane is singing with me throughout the song; it’s the first time I have recorded another female voice with mine like this.”
Havana Garden is the final single release from the brand new EP, Strange As Folk, which has just been released. Bird is an award-winning Anglo-Irish artist based between Tuscany and London. Her classical training and multi-instrumental ability shimmer through these songs, and Havana Garden, with its luscious strings, elegant arrangement and grace, is a fine example of Bird’s songcraft. Enjoy.
