Electric Blue Yonder is the musical project of married couple Beth Hataway and Johnny Veres, whose atmospheric folk sound will capture your attention and draw you in emotionally. Both from Montgomery, Alabama, the pair met in the summer of 2010 when Hataway was about to leave town and Veres was returning home. These days, they collaborate with Russell Thomas Bush and various other musicians as a, “Traveling troupe of space folk musicians researching humanity, and reporting through song.”
Just before the pandemic, Electric Blue Yonder released a debut full-length album of, ‘Between Space and Time’, before spending months of isolation working on new material. Now, we’re delighted to premiere their latest video, ‘Lonely Child’. Throughout the effective visual, we follow Hataway and Veres as they enter a dilapidated house, wandering from one abandoned room to another, looking at their surroundings with a nostalgia mirrored by the wistful music. It’s particularly powerful towards the end when a moment of silence is broken by their voices, “…and I don’t know where I’m going,” as they sing of being lost, drifting and searching like a lonely child. The video finishes with the sight of the house, once a home, collapsing in on itself. It’s starkly beautiful. Aside from the gorgeous melody and instrumentation, ‘Lonely Child’ is most notable for how well the couple’s voices work together, entwined and inseparable.
Johnny Veres told AUK about ‘Lonely Child’: “The song is very special to us because it marks a transformative period in our writing. There’s a maturity to it, both lyrically and sonically, that reflects the tone of our times. It’s a somber realization that the fleeting nature of life truly means we can never go back to where we came from, who we were, or the loved ones we’ve lost. I woke up early the morning of February 23rd, 2020 just a few days before the release of our first full length, Between Space & Time, and wrote the first drafts for both, Mourning Sounds (title track of the upcoming album) and Lonely Child. Looking back, it’s almost as if the zeitgeist was speaking through me about the year to come, and the depth of meaning continues to grow with time.”
This single goes live today, 29th July, which was the date that NASA was founded. It’s taken from upcoming album ‘Mourning Sounds’, which is due for release on 29th September, the anniversary of the first manned space mission following the Challenger disaster. These carefully chosen dates point to the fact that Electric Blue Yonder are incredible space-fanatics. The duo’s absorbing, dreamy folk will transport you somewhere out there, somewhere in the cosmos. Enjoy.
Thank you Andrew for the article!