Phyllis Ophelia
Brooklyn’s Phyllis Ophelia returned with her new EP Analemma I that offers up a five song cycle to round out what has been a trying year for all. Following up 2015’s beloved “Unbuilt” single, Phyllis continues to create songs that are guaranteed to connect to everyone in the most unexpected of ways. For this cycle of heart & spirit-penned songs she enlisted the production & percussion talents of Phil McNeal, bass by Eric Weiser, mastering courtesy of Ajax Abernathy & additional vocals from Charmaine Lee that make for one of the most perfect & privy soundtracks for meditative moments found out of the constant chaos & demands of the day.
Analemma I is the ultimate panacea for all of us coping with our own personal & universal issues during the difficult season of autumn’s transition to the isolation & cold that winter brings. Those remotely acquainted with Ophelia’s work understand the holistic hymns at play that speak to the sublime & ineffable aspects of expression & song composition. The legends of NYC undergrounds can be heard reverberating throughout Phyllis’s music, yet she provides something that is all her very own where her voice stands untouched amid an ever changing variety of arrangements that move from acoustic strums to electric odysseys or experimental collaborations that demonstrate the Queens by Brooklyn artist seemingly infinite & authentic range.
And through the five song run of Analemma I, Phyllis Ophelia summons up the emotions and feelings that are nearly impossible to describe. Tides of change & growth are entertained on the mind/spirit awakening “New Dirt” that instantly speaks to the most sacred places of sentiment in ways that shake & wake the legions of underslept & overworked sleepwalkers making their way through the daydream nations & routines of the world. Memories of instances and inward responses are illustrated through poems that are given breaths of life & light that soar like birds in flight seeking that solace from the uncompromising weather of winter. “Shopping Cart” featuring vocals from Charmaine Lee puts a new spin on the “You Better Shop Around” notion that seeks for substance beyond the retail-like values people can place upon each other where you are nearly brought to tear in less than three minutes.
Phyllis illustrates the complicated & deeply imbricated arrays of connections that comprise the many facets that make up the chemistry of desire. Clandestine meetings & cryptic invitations are exchanged on “Oblique” that moves according to an arrangement of it’s own illustrious mystery. The chords continue to allude toward unsaid emotions & possibly withheld feelings as Phyllis sings out the refrain of, “find me in the early night…the early night…” Then we are brought to the dusk to starlight twinkle & shine of “Dreaming at the Low End of the Year” that offers up fevered cabin dreams where every feels wrapped up into a viscerally charged similes and deeper motifs are heard in lyrics like “apples taste like your mouth.” The concluding song “Saint Hangover” exits until we are graced with Analemma II where once again Phyllis breaks down your emotional defenses with the devastating chorus, “How did you get into my head? How do you catch & you keep my breath? Why do I go to you for rest? You give me love with a little bit of death.” Intensity of emotive reckoning & reasoning takes you through the motions of the inward reactions to those certain crutches in our lives & the long difficult breakups & aftermaths that occur the following morning. And with all this, Phyllis seeks but a sunset to live in as both a refuge & home for hibernation & renewal.
Phyllis Ophelia elaborated upon her own organic approach to music and arrangements with the following exclusive process notes on the making of Analemma I:
Analemma I is the first half of a loose sort of calendar. I wrote all the songs in fall/winter 2015-16, and while they are mainly love songs they keep as their fulcrum a preoccupation with the descent toward and the long climb out of the darkest part of the year. The eventual second half, Analemma II, will deal with the warm seasons.
“Oblique” and “Dreaming at the Low End of the Year” are the most explicit about their situation in time, and the former is also the first song I ever wrote on electric guitar after making the switch last year. “Saint Hangover”, which closes out the EP, is the last song I wrote on acoustic guitar; the lyrics are about coming to terms with the fact that a lover doesn’t love you back and is imminently leaving, but I wrote it primarily as a farewell to summer. “New Dirt” and “Shopping Cart” come as a pair, and were the last songs to be written for the project. My friend Charmaine Lee, a brilliant avant garde jazz vocalist, sings a verse and back-ups on the latter. I am still thrilled about her contribution.
The EP was recorded in my co-producer and drummer’s basement over about nine months. We kept the instrumentation and arrangement very simple: guitar, vocals, bass, drums, percussion. Some vocal and guitar overdubs. Minimal effects. The live set sounds very, very much like the record as a result, which is something I was aiming for.
My friend Lauren Marcela Escobar did the gorgeous artwork, which is a print capturing my kitchen and hallway. Over several weeks, she came over at various times of day to look at these spaces, etching an impression into a large copper plate. What I like about her prints and drawings is that they are at once spare and dense; she translates gradual changes in light into compact, impactful visual vocabulary that simultaneously does not give too much away. She tells me that the print she eventually gave me was the only one to come out right out of several attempts.
I’ll be playing these and other songs at my next show on Sunday, 12/18, at the Footlight, at 7:30pm, with friends Patio, Energy Guide, Text Message, and Chimneys.
Phyllis Ophelia’s Analemma I is available now.
