First Impressions: From Every Direction by Selena Feliciano

There’s no escaping the insanity that passes itself off as current events, these days. War is peace. Peace is war. Endless debates rage on- and offline, with everyone trading barbs and talons over the latest headlines. Layoffs. Inflation. ICE. Climate change. Epstein. Beneath the rancor, however, it seems to me that there’s something else at play: malaise. A melancholia has blanketed the world. Few are better off than they were then—and “then” is pretty much any point in the past 40 years. Even something as seemingly trivial as TV gets us going. Remember how “cord cutting” was said to save us a few bucks?! Now there’s 57 streaming apps, nothing’s still on, and we pay the same if not more than we did before.

It’s only getting worse. Tech companies push AI and virtual companions, apparently unaware that—at some point in the distant past—a race of fabricated beings, aka the Cylons, rose up and decimated humanity. (That’s a joke. Sort of.) Are they seeding our destruction? Do we care? When so few have so much, and the rest of us can barely afford lunch, it’s easier to direct our wrath at the other fools fighting for scraps than take on the “suits.” Better that than admit the little sadnesses that accent modern life. Am I right?

Maybe. Maybe not. There are moments, such as when Selena Feliciano sings, when my long-ingrained cynicism gives way to unfettered optimism. Her From Every Direction EP, out today, trades in joy and hope, with its four tracks celebrating the very things that make this thing we call life worthwhile. “Music, for me, is about processing. The gift of song allows me to compost discomfort, pain, and grief while also planting the seeds for new realities. It’s an absolute ingredient of ongoing healing,” she says in the press release.

I spotlighted the opening “The Prayer” a few weeks back; it melds folk and gospel into a soulful invocation, with her voice reminding me of Roberta Flack’s. The song doles out hope along with apt advice: turn off the screen, relax, and float away from those who push distractions and division. The low-key “Work of Art,” accented by a saxophone, finds her contemplating the link between art and nature.

“Desert’s Calling,” for its part, shimmers like the heat in the distance, while the lyrics question whether the direction we’re heading is an oasis or just a mirage. The EP concludes with “Souvenir Echoes,” about the hold memories have over us: “Life is a fragile thing,” she sings, ably balancing the past with the present, nature with nurture, and love and heartache.

In short, From Every Direction is a tremendous—if too short—set. Feliciano possesses one of those voices that simply carries us with her, flying high one moment and swooping low the next, feeling all that she feels, and leaving us with hope that tomorrow will be better than today.