This is such wonderful bedroom pop. It makes me think of the Softies, though the sonic palette is quite different. The lyrics get a bit burry in favor of overall tone, but that sound! You could curl up in it and feel like it’s an endless, slightly sad mid-afternoon forever . Swanson makes beautiful, layered music that mostly resists classification: too pop to be electronic, too soft to be rock, too X to be Y, too A to be B — she’s heard it all before. No wonder she felt strange: her music is one of in-betweens.
Take “Lake,” the opening song off Yohuna’s long-time-coming debut LP, Patientness, which is now available on Orchid Tapes (and includes a re-recorded version of beloved, Hunger Games-referencing “Badges” . With a bittersweet cloud of synth and guitar, “Lake” sounds like a summer spent in the shade of a tree, a meditation on a passing moment. The light on the lake/ How it gives and it takes/ Like a summer/ Far away, she sings. It sounds a little electronic, a little rock, and a little pop. But it’s not quite any of those things.
Swanson grew up in the Wisconsin countryside, going to church three times a week. Her town was quiet but her family was musical: her mother, at one point, provided musical therapy as a hospice chaplain, and her father played classical piano. Swanson grew up singing in choirs and acting in musicals , honing an interest in songwriting that would follow her through college at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and through her later stints in New Mexico, Berlin, and finally, Brooklyn.
Swanson first came to New York as part of the live-in residency program at Brooklyn DIY arts space the Silent Barn, but was quickly displaced by a fire last September. “I really don’t know if [Patientness] would have happened if [the fire] hadn’t,” she said. “Things like that just force you to prioritize.” She was the one who discovered the fire, so moving back in was no longer an option – the memory of that day made her physically sick. It was around this time that she began working with Canadian composer Owen Pallett , and recording Patientness — the title a suitable mantra for such personally turbulent times.
The album’s title is reminder of things just over the horizon, and the fleeting nature of what’s happening now. I would like to be hung over/ With the sun streaming over us/ That’s when things are normal, Swanson sings on “World Series.” Hangovers may be unpleasant, but they are also proof that we’re real. That’s where you find Yohuna — not hungover necessarily, but somewhere in the middle — of then and now, of happy and sad….just trying to feel real.
Written, arranged, and performed by Yohuna.
Yohuna is Johanne Swanson.
Adelyn Strei sang, played guitar, and co-wrote “Golden Foil”.
Felix Walworth played drums.
Emily Sprague played mellotron.
Warren Hildebrand played bass.
Owen Pallett played a lot of things.
Production and engineering on “Creep Date” by Jake Yuhas and Miles Coe.
Produced by Yohuna and Owen Pallett.
The Fat Angel Sings 