Emily Yacina’s new song “Gleaming” is an upward rush of momentum. “Meet me here/ I’ll show you/ The same light/ I’m feeling,” she sings, her delivery breathless, words spilling out in an incantatory pulse. The track was originally supposed to be entirely instrumental, and it wasn’t until late in the process of making her new album, Remember The Silver, that Yacina stumbled on a melody that fit. The result feels like getting sucked up into space, a hermetic environment where only you and your object of affection exist.
“It’s inspired by throwing yourself into a situation and letting your heart determine your feelings,” Yacina explains. “Letting go and just enjoying someone — for a night or an experience.” In only 90 seconds, she captures that feeling of love without consequence, that glowing moment of rapture where next-steps don’t matter.
“Gleaming” is the lead single to Remember The Silver, the latest in a series of stellar releases from Yacina, whose voice you might recognize as the foil to many a (Sandy) Alex G song. She grew up in the same Philadelphia suburb as Alex Giannascoli, and it was during high school that she first started putting music online. Since then, she’s carved out a niche for gauzy and emotionally earnest songs. Her string of Bandcamp releases, including 2015’s Soft Stuffand 2017’sHeart Sky, are a treasure trove of wrenching melodies and delightfully off-kilter meditations on time and absence. Heart Sky is particularly great, made up of songs that Yacina wrote while isolated in Alaska for a couple of months during a summer. Her songs often operate at that kind of remove, like she’s trying so intimately to document a feeling that she ends up questioning whether that feeling even really exists at all.
Her new album is her most fully-realized project yet, recorded with Eric Littmann — who has also produced similarly introspective albums by Yohuna and Julie Byrne — and put together over the course of the last couple years as Yacina finished school, getting a degree in Environmental Studies, and settling down in New York City as an adult. Remember The Silver captures those first few tentative steps into adulthood, when suddenly who you are is defined entirely by what you make of it.
The video for new single “Gleaming” was directed by Caroline Pigou. “Getting to work with one of my dearest friends, Caroline Pigou, on this video makes it so special to me,” Yacina said. “I was so comfortable shooting because it was her and I, and I feel like that intimacy / confidence comes through like magic.
The album’s title is taken from a book about UFO abductions. The songs themselves play out sort of like a series of abductions in the form of relationships which take over your entire being. They explore what happens when all of a sudden a relationship is over, and you’re left figuring out how to fit into the world once again on your own. That search for definition drives the album, which sounds ecstatically sad in that exploration of the unknown.
Released December 6th, 2019
Written & Recorded 2017 – 2019 in New York City
Written by Emily Yacina
The Fat Angel Sings 