20/06/2025
Presave Oropendola's upcoming album Swimming at https://hypeddit.com/oropendola/swimming
There is a striking intimacy throughout Swimming, the sophomore album from Oropendola (Brooklyn-based Joanna Schubert). With unwavering reflection and resolve, it rejects what keeps us contained and disconnected, clawing toward something wilder. What would it be like for each of us to inhabit our fullest experience of connection and vulnerability?
In contrast with Waiting for the Sky to Speak, Oropendola's kaleidoscopic chamber-pop debut, Swimming is foundationally a piano-vocal record. Co-produced with Zubin Hensler (Half Waif, Westerlies, Twig Twig), the album captures Schubert’s penchant and reverence for unfettered live performance. It was recorded as multiple solo sets in her childhood basement, on the same Steinway upright she grew up playing. Schubert’s arrangements feature close collaborators/bandmates Elizabeth LoPiccolo and Gabby Sherba, whose vocalizations recall the bold, idiosyncratic energy of The Roches. Instrumentation oscillates between jagged and lush, with LoPiccolo on flute, Hensler on synths and electric bass, and Schubert sprinkling in touches of toy piano, harpsicle, and cello.
Conjuring the raw incisiveness of Fiona Apple and the oddball playfulness of Regina Spektor, Schubert digs deep and has a grand time doing so. The seven songs of Swimming paint vivid scenes: piercing confessions, woozy barroom ballads, improvised woodland fantasies. Desire Keeps Me Company juxtaposes sumptuous imagery with crass mundanity. Pyre - inspired by a book about death practices - blazes with pulsing synth and syncopated speak-sing. The Baroquian odyssey Moss Covered Alder Tree soars towards collective catharsis.
"Set me loose in a wild field / swelled roses, red balloons" Schubert sings, "I must soften now / make room, make room."
And so we soften. And release.
