Ears Wide Open: Evangeline

on
0
Evangeline (Photo by Marly Ludwig)

Singer-songwriter Eva B. Ross is back with a new moniker, Evangeline, and a fresh, airy, lo-fi single “Will.” As Eva B. Ross, she released an album, a batch of singles and collaborated with the likes of Buck Meek, Christian Lee Hutson, Tomemitsu, Temme Scott, Jack Symes and Marinelli, among others. She’s also been a staple at local festivals. And in her other professional life under her given name, Evangeline Barrosse, she’s a journalist covering arts and culture.

Her debut single as Evangeline, “Will,” arrived with a music video directed by Marly Ludwig. Evangeline sings the lyrics “Will / I’m really wanting to tell you / Everything on my mind / But it’s coming out funny / I laugh but I’m not feeling so sunny,” facing the camera as she strums an acoustic guitar while standing and dancing in a meadow in a breezy red dress. Around 40 seconds into the video, an arm coming from the direction of the camera reaches for her, but she rolls her eyes and shifts her arms, rejecting the advances. Any Wills in the house should listen up, because in this case “Will” refers to a name, not a noun or verb.

(Since the video’s release over a week ago, it’s gone viral, amassing more than a million views on YouTube — a phenomenon that has puzzled the songwriter herself.)

Of the track, Evangeline says, “I wrote this song entirely in my head driving through my childhood neighborhood of Topanga Canyon. Conceptually it’s pretty simple: I met someone who asked me, innocently, ‘What you been up to?’ It felt like a loaded question. I laughed instead of crying. My friend Dillon [Casey] and I recorded the entire song at his house in a day a week later. It’s about the way we have to constantly reconcile the way we perceive ourselves with the way we portray ourselves to others — about the way we make heavy things seems light so as not to scare others away — especially at the beginning. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘me.’ I do these things. I hope someone else does, too …”

The echoing acoustic guitars and dreamy vocals bring to mind artists experiencing success with this dreamy lo-fi style, like the Marías, Still Woozy and Omar Apollo.

||| Stream: “Will”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Will”