Los Angeles-via-Pinetop, Arizona songstress Zella Day honed her craft in her small desert town around the town’s lone coffeehouse, owned by her parents. Day injects her latest single, “Sweet Ophelia”, with a dusty breeziness in her vocals native to her origins atop a contemporary throbbing, synth-backed foundation.
If Nancy Sinatra’s boots were simply made for walking, Zella’s boots are made for stomping judging by the colossal drum machine beat that meets us at the outset and carries the meter throughout the tune. Day also endows the song with a vague but magnetic exoticism, reflective of herself, as is evident of her seductive cavorting in the accompanying video.
What sets Zella truly apart is the timbre of her voice, at once projecting an ethereal delicacy while also asserting a kind of sinewy might – enviable qualities possessed by none other than Stevie Nicks, no doubt one of Zella’s influences. It’s hard not to get swept up into her windstorm when she croons, “up, up away”, as the chorus seeps away.
“Sweet Ophelia” (with b-side, “1965″) is out today, 7 April, via B3SCI Records.
Stream the track below:
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