++ WILL NOT ARRIVE!!!! ++

For those unaware, there’s a confidence that rings out across the eleven songs that make up Waiting for the Sky to Speak, Joanna Schubert’s debut album as Oropendola, a word that means golden pendulum.

Set to release March 17th, 2023, these tracks shimmer with bursts of energy and emotion, swinging from playfulness to earnestness with deft, technicolor brushstrokes.

The album is a celebration of choosing life even in the face of its ephemerality, and of finding motion even in the midst of stillness.

Waiting for the Sky to Speak is an imaginative and colorful chimera of a collection that marks Oropendola’s triumphant arrival. Ultimately, these songs ask one of the soul’s most fundamental questions: how do you find your footing in an impermanent world? There is no absolute answer, and thus, as Schubert finds, there is no purpose in waiting for one.

1. Rorschach Sky
2. Flowers on My Front Stoop
3. Knocking Down Flowers
4. Trust The Sun
5. Shimmy Up, Melt Down
6. Drop the Stone
7. At the Edge of It
8. For Winslow
9. AHFTKC
10. Chrysalis
11. When You Carried Me

This organically cultured, immensely submersible new recording opens on the jaggedly-rhythmic Rorschach Sky and the joyfully fluctuating melodies of Flowers on My Front Stoop, and then comes the ethereal, veritably shimmering Knocking Down Flowers, the orchestrally-imbued, at first breathy ballad, later euphorically-charged, Kate Bush-esque Trust The Sun and then we get the synth pop-bounce of Shimmy Up, Melt Down.

Along next is one of my own personal favorites, the airy, floating Drop the Stone and that is in turn followed by the effervescently-sculptured At the Edge of It, the heartfelt storytelling within For Winslow, the delightful ’80s crystalline synth work within AHFTKC, the album rounding out on the captivating Chrysalis, closing on the engaging balladry of When You Carried Me.

The songs on Waiting for the Sky to Speak were born from a time of immobility both existential and literal. As the world went into a state of lockdown during the pandemic, Schubert was reckoning with a feeling that, for years, her life had been at a standstill. She was ready to lift herself from the muck of fear and doubt, and move forward, to embrace joy and sing through the static.

Aren’t we tired of waiting in the chrysalis? she sings on Chrysalis, giving voice to restlessness in the face of stagnation, while also acknowledging the invisible growth in those states of suspension. The choice of album title, then, is a fitting one: the phrase, which comes from the album’s opening track Rorschach Sky, points to the missed opportunity of spending your life waiting for something when life is happening all around you.

If you’re waiting for some kind of answer from the sky, Schubert says, you’re not seeing the beauty and the motion in every passing moment.

Across this collection, Schubert’s skill with orchestration and arrangement, which she studied in college, is on full display. The album’s sonic palette blends the orchestral sounds of clarinet, flugelhorn, harp, and strings with searing synths, grooving drums and bass, adventurous vocal manipulations, and emotive piano. The result is a kind of kaleidoscopic chamber pop that pays homage to both the grandiose theatricality of Kate Bush and the digital balladry of FKA Twigs.

Oropendola - Knocking Down Flowers (Official Music Video)

Official Website