Her voice drifts in on the wind as if a thick and layered cumulus cloud, quavery yet intense. Rudimentary instrumentation flows with it, the laconic drums, guitars and keyboard almost mattering not. No, it’s that haunting specter of a vocal rising and falling, and passing through the walls that surround even the most hardened of hearts, that lures you in. “Pink Living Room,” the latest single from Bella White’s forthcoming long player, A Sign in the Weather, is—as so many of her songs—a timeless wonder that could well have been retrieved from the dusty bins of a secondhand LP store. It could be a crackly lacquered 78 rpm disc from the 1930s, a scratchy 45 from the ‘50s, or one of those 33 1/3 promo pressings from the ‘70s or ‘80s. It’s a deep breath of a welled-up emotion that imprints itself on the soul.
Lyrically, it delves into a matter that likely arrived with humankind’s move into sentience: a relationship that leaves one feeling worse about one’s self, not better. I’m not talking “soft winds blow in the summertime/young lovers feel so free/walking hand in hand down a shady lane/what happened to me?,” to borrow a few lines from a Richie Furay song about heartbreak, but the toxic form that one can never quite escape from. To quote White here, “I’m so scared of all the thoughts I have/I’m so scared, and you put them there.” Now, after she’s found someone who makes her happy, the former flame is reaching out in hopes of being “just friends” again and…well, that’s it. That’s the song. Reaching out, stirring up sad memories, is cruelty in and of itself. There’s no resolution, no slamming of doors here, just a wistfulness that lingers.
The album is due out June 5th. It’s available for purchase on both Bandcamp and Bella’s online store, with the latter featuring a signed placard.
The Old Grey Cat 