Maria Usbeck envelops the listener in a tide on "Mantarraya"

Maria Usbeck comes closer than most as she channels the serenity of this majestic creature for her latest offering "Mantarraya". The former Selebrities frontwoman dons full ray garb for the music video, which sees her float unfazed through the streets and subways of New York – her current habitat.

This unusual odyssey is a perfect primer for Usbeck's forthcoming album Naturaleza, due in April. Written over five years amid various setbacks, its encompassing spirit is one of peace, tranquility, and trying to feel at one with the planet. Like previous works, it's grounded in reality while allowing itself to be seduced by fantasy, collaging disparate sounds in the most inventive of ways.

Usbeck’s approach to music is multifaceted, whether she's channeling the Britpop fan she once was, the warmth of Latin icons like Celia Cruz, or the hushed intensity of a forest at dawn. Her solo debut, 2016's Amparo, produced in collaboration with Caroline Polachek, swept through the topography of Latin America, with lyrics sung not just in Spanish but in different indigenous languages. This was followed in 2019 by the electro-pop Envejeciendo, whose philosophical enquiry into the ageing process was sparked off by a friend's flippant comment on some new grey hairs.

"Mantarraya" shimmers with reverb and polyrhythmic percussion, enveloping the listener as decisively as an incoming tide. Usbeck's world is a place where birdsong coexists with the creaking of machinery, and where the stories of relatives and strangers are invested with narrative power and strangeness, and at times a sense of unease. One of the warnings of Envejeciendo was that the alienating advance of technology sits at odds with growing older, a roadblock to inner peace.

With "Mantarraya" she sets out to reclaim some sense of equilibrium, a grim sense of resolve underpinning her grief at the planet's decline. Slowing down to admire the beauty of nature, its pink lakes, iguanas, and blue herons, only drives home the senseless destruction of it all. “Humanity stands at a breaking point; we've lost our bond with the natural world," she explains. "We deem ourselves superior, advanced, yet it’s only through harmony and a symbiotic relationship with nature that we can avert an inevitable doom."

That statement sums up the duality of Usbeck's music fairly well: a feeling that decline is inevitable but maybe something can be salvaged in the meantime. "I propose we learn to reconnect, to rediscover the balance we've forgotten," she adds. "That's what I've been up to and what this record is about. Healing.” With "Mantarraya" Maria Usbeck gives us a glimpse into another possible reality, carving out a space of retreat in a world of chaos, inviting us to submerge ourselves into the endless mysteries of nature.