In the first weeks of the lockdown, many suddenly discovered: silence is not at all the same as peace. Cities fell silent, streets emptied, and in this emptiness everyone was left alone with themselves – without the usual buffer of meetings, work, flights and exhausting running around that we call life. For some, this turned out to be a gift. For most – a test. For artists – as usual, both.
Photo credit Max Gerber
Eleni Mandell – a singer and songwriter from Los Angeles, often called an “artist outside of genres” – spent this time far from the studio. She disappeared from the radar of the stage for a while: she taught English to high school students, assembled a new everyday life – two children, remote learning and a world frozen in uncertainty. Life was not especially ceremonious: the loss of her father and her longtime mentor, Chuck E. Weiss, a divorce and a move to the suburbs. For Mandell, this silence turned out to be a pause before an inhale. Seven years – a span during which the world manages to break and somehow assemble itself back. The new album “Tailspin,” released on May 29 on Schoolkids Records, is exactly about this state. “I didn’t know whether I would ever record an album again,” Mandell admits. But the songs still seeped through – as if from a half-dream, where noir pop, folk and jazz found each other in the chaos of life.
To call the new album a comeback is to understand nothing. This is a lullaby-manual for survival. Fourteen songs about how you fall apart – and what happens next. I will not go through every track: some things are better left to the listener without hints. But there are several songs that cannot be passed by. Let’s start with them. “How Will I Know” opens the album with delicacy. The question in the title is rhetorical only at first glance. Mandell asks it seriously, with a special weariness in her voice. The arrangement is transparent: guitar, soft drums, a little air and a trembling vocal. Everything is built in the spirit of acoustic restraint. The atmosphere set in the first track does not dissipate – it changes temperature. The nuances and colors please, rare riffs and deliberately not pushed forward but noticeable guitar solos, as well as the audible leading bass guitar. Sudden, looping rhythm changes appear, bursts of brass and percussion that build their own filigree and creative sound space.
Photo credit Max Gerber
“Lemon Tree” is one of the brightest and most personal moments of the album. There is a special tenderness in it that comes only through what has been lived through. Written for daughter Della and connected with moving to a new house, the song slips away from precise definitions – somewhere between a lullaby, an elegy and a declaration of love. Mandell sings about a child’s perception of the world with care and warmth. Musically the track is watercolor-like – blurred contours, soft light. Minimalist folk and vocals do their work: the song moves quietly and precisely. And it seems that even in a closed space you can grow something alive – be it a tree, a memory or a new version of yourself. Mandell, it seems, knows some personal VIP exit leading to something greater and hard to explain. Next – a turn. “Life Is Sometimes” is a syntactically incomplete title, absolutely accurate. The singer is especially precise: life really is “sometimes” – and in this “sometimes” everything fits: quiet happiness and sudden pain. The music sways like a pendulum, and the vocal plays with moods – tenderness and slight fatigue. Very open music, it also has much from blues (a kind of country-blues with jazz elements).
After it, “Better Than Love” sounds like a smile through experience. A light synthesizer flair appears, a bit more rhythm and air. But behind the external playfulness one feels the irony of a person who is no longer inclined to idealize feelings, but rather considers them from a distance. And yet the album does not allow you to linger in this lightness for long. “Hard to Be Lonely” returns to the theme of loneliness. A confession-song: “yes, it’s hard, but everything will pass.” The vocal dissolves in space, the waltzing rhythm pushes the body to sway in time. The album comes to the final two tracks with the accumulated weight of everything before. “Trying to Remember How to Save You” is perhaps the most painful. Already in the title – exactly “how,” not “can I” – there is something piercing. Memory as a tool of salvation and the fear that it fails. Mandell sings with a deep intonation in her voice, the kind used when speaking about the most important things and when one has long cried their tears. “Old Man, Old Dog” ends the album with the dignity of good finales. An old man, an old dog – archetypal images, but Mandell treats them with trembling care. A song about departure, about memory, about how we hold on to those we are already losing. The album ends with surprising calm, placing a soft ellipsis in the story.
The mood of the album is not an invitation into the secrets of thoughts. It is rather an extroverted statement, a reflection of emotions and a dance of souls. Such a special atmosphere, charm and spirit are created by Eleni Mandell’s songs. If you suddenly fall asleep under the languid and thoughtful album “Tailspin,” the sleep will be healing and calm.
Voxwave Magazine: Music, Culture, Interview, Fashion 