Singer-Songwriter pianist Rachael Yamagata will release “Starlit Alchemy”, her first new album since 2016’s “Tightrope Walker”, October 3. The album is preceded by the single “Birds”, which will be officially released on Friday.
“‘Birds’ testify to the extra help of’ surreal ‘you get when navigating the madness we live in today in line with the grief of losing someone,’ Says Yamagata of the song. “The loneliness for both at the same time is deep, double unfair. Tonic was in the signs we get tells us that they are still here …” Listen to the song below.
Yamagata first came in the early 2000s with its critically acclaimed debut “Event”, and her music has developed over the years, mostly recently outside the large label system. She has worked with a wide selection of artists including Liz Phair, bright eyes, tots and Maytals, Ray Lamontagne and others.
But after nine years, in October, she returns with “Starlit Alchemy”, a “deep record”, as she describes it, intended to be heard in its entirety. “I always knew it would be a song-flow-in-next album,” she says. “The songs began as a compulsion to just express what I went through and witnessed – only later did I realize the more coherent story. It became a map made after the trip, not before. But that’s all there.
When asked about describing the album, she says: “Maybe think of Tom Waits like Willy Wonka and Ricki Lee Jones as Dorothy in a soundscape mentored by Hans Zimmer and Joni Mitchell – from her” both sides now “Album. Nothing I am well versed on the road, so forgive all claims.”