Stream: Lili Haydn, ‘Sayonara’

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Lili Haydn

Just in time to usher you-know-who out the door of the White House, singer-songwriter and violin whiz Lili Haydn offers a strikingly cinematic goodbye.

“Sayonara” will appear on Haydn’s album “More Love,” out this spring via Lakeshore Records. It’s the first solo full-length since 2014 for Haydn, whose band Opium Moon won a Grammy in 2019 for Best New Age Album.

Especially in the 11-minute version — revealed below, accompanied by a time-lapse video of painter Norton Wisdom doing his thing — “Sayonara” cries out for change using Haydn’s breathy vocals, a gentle but urgent beat and a violin that seems to have multiple personalities. It’s sorrowful, then hopeful, then mysterious, ominous and stately.

“I’ve howled so many times over the last four years (and indeed before that) ‘enough is enough…’ of the suffering and dogma and endless war and brutality,” Haydn says. “This song is my throwing down the gauntlet to the systems of oppression, starting with my own participation. … ‘I’m laying down my arms today. Not another in my name.’ It seemed especially relevant and even celebratory to release it right before the inauguration.”

||| Stream: “Sayonara” (full version, accompanied by a timelapse video of Norton Wisdom painting)

||| Stream: “Sayonara” (radio edit)