‘Brodeo Waltz’ is the haunting new single from Elena Loper. With her acoustic guitar and tumbling notes on the piano, the Pacific Northwest-based artist manages to convey an unexpected intensity and a bleak mood that matches the isolation and snowy landscapes in the accompanying video. Most importantly, Loper possesses a voice and vocal style that lends itself to her darkly atmospheric stories and personal recollections. Beautifully pure and melodic, her voice follows a tuneful path that feels both new and familiar at once and she draws you in with its silky warmth.
After touring the Pacific Northwest and California in 2019 with her project Dravus House, Loper took time away from music to stay with her grandmother, who was nearing the end of her life. They sang together, talked, and remembered, bonding over old letters and photos. On the night before her grandmother died, Loper wrote a song for her that she played at the end. It was the first of many songs written for her grandmother and music continued to heal and soothe Loper during the pandemic years. This period of genuine rest, in her own company, was transformative. She says: “I would sit at a desk facing the window, listen to the birds, and watch the changing of the seasons and sit in stillness. I would go out to the yard and sing to the mountains and all of the colours – golds, purples, and blues. With this stillness, I found it easier to listen to my inner voice, and to those mystical, inexplicable waves of words, sounds, and melodies that seem to flow through time and space, and out of my mouth and fingers.” In the songs that emerged, songs of loss and hope, Loper found herself again.
Loper’s forthcoming album, “Weathervane Whale”, draws together memories and moments from her life in a collection of deeply personal songs. Those experiences became a kind of poetry, snapshots given life through her intriguing lyrics. Loper says of the album: “Trying to fully capture an entire event in song felt both too overwhelming and too clunky. Setting the scene helps me remember both euphoric and heartbreaking moments of my life. A lot of these songs are centred around moving through feelings of deep grief, fear, and loss, as well as remembering and cherishing the joyful times in my life.”
Check this out – absorbing stuff.
