The Fat Angel Sings

Fleeting and intimate and profound, Marina Allen’s new song sounds like dusk.

“Original Goodness” is the third single off the Los Angeles based singer-songwriter’s forthcoming debut album on Fire Records “Candlepower” and it’s a spare, staggeringly beautiful folk number, the type of song that might make you cry without you even realizing it.

“There’s no hiding from this one,” Allen says of the track. “The lyrics and melody flooded out one long afternoon. I didn’t think I would end up revealing it but I couldn’t resist its hold on me.” “Sometimes I hear you / but it’s my voice, out of my head,” Allen sings in an early verse, her vocals flickering over soft acoustic guitar. “I saw you mouth something from a mountain / How do we go through hell and then just go to bed?”

The song also arrives with a meandering, meditative video — edited by Jonny Sanders, a.k.a.Prehuman that shows Allen staring out her window and walking her dog.

“The video’s making had different iterations, each one getting closer to the source of the inspiration behind the song,” Allen says . “Part filmed by a friend in mythical Louisiana, part filmed in my bedroom, part filmed through the neighbourhood streets I wander when I’m bored, lonely, or both, this song is about how accepting the distance from someone or something gets you closer, even if you’re not sure what you’re getting closer to.”

For Allen, “Original Goodness” is ultimately about finding hope in that liminal space. “The song explores the understanding that resurrection or self-renewal can begin wherever there is hope, no matter the width or depth of the chasm,” she says. “It’s in exploring the space between, the often stagnant stillness, that movement happens.”

That theme is especially prominent in the last verse. “And I will tell you / how to close a chasm with a clothespin / how it can come undone for good reason / how to renew without a season,” Allen sings as the instrumentation fades.

“Through the writing of this song, along with the rest of the album, I was able to start finding things I thought were lost forever,” Allen shares. “It just became more and more clear as I continued writing: you want hope, you make hope. You want understanding, you make understanding. You want light, you make light. Expressing impressions, visions, illusions, and heavily armed feelings, I was able to start remembering myself, which got me closer to something I call original goodness, my candlepower.”

“Original Goodness” comes after Allen’s previous singles “Oh, Louise” and “Sleeper Train.” All three will appear on Candlepower, which arrives June 4 via Fire Records. 

Marina Allen glides on angelic highs, surfing the husky deep; she is one of the great new voices of her generation. Writing songs that carry notes from other realms; these are kitchen table tales about love and fear, the capturing of the wild heart, sketching the breaking of dawn, bringing real life back to life.

Every song on stunning debut album ‘Candlepower’ is a tick box of influences, asides, inspirations, quickfire theories, storylines and melodic progressions that galvanise a chemical reaction for each dramatic scene that unfolds on this genre-traversing seven song epic.

One listen to opening track ‘Oh, Louise’ underlines the range of Marina’s talent, it’s a filmic play on words, with an arrangement that’s like a Kate Bush dream sequence. It’s the perfect foil for the plaintive strum of ‘Sleeper Train’, a haunting, folky paean fit for Judee Sill brought up to date with some echoey electric guitar; or the conversational ‘Believer’; with a nod to Joni Mitchell in the lyrics it sounds every bit like Simon And Garfunkel at their Big Apple best listening to the ‘7 O’Clock News’ re-imagined on Sunset.

The stuff of legend for a voice that surfs many musical tangents, hovers, and persists, that stings with honesty; morphing from Karen Carpenter’s gentle reverence to Laura Nyro’s soulful grit, moving through the phases like some possessed Dada performance artist before throwing in a melody from Joni at her jazziest or from the close harmonies of the lamented Roches when they flipped out with Robert Fripp.

‘Candlepower’ is a juxtaposition of melodies, an achingly beautiful set of songs set against the clank of the mundane world, a beguiling commentary on the everyday and everywhere. It’s all here, in under 20 minutes… every second counts.

Marina Allen’s music is like that rollercoaster ride you have in your dreams, a moving, hard-to-believe balancing act that crosses tracks, occasionally leaves the rails and invariably flows unapologetically, succinctly and spine-tinglingly to a glorious conclusion.

Marina Allen pours every ounce of her being into her music.

A songwriter is rare skill and intensity, the California based talent seems capable of shaking the ground beneath your feet.

Debut album ‘Candlepower’ will be released on June 4th – and it’s the broadest example yet of her artistry.

A rich, vivid experience, it’s led by her wonderfully enticing new single ‘Oh, Louise’ and its intoxicating video.

‘Candlepower’ will be released on June 4th. on Fire Records.