Lindsey Troy blooms wild and tender on soulful solo single "I've Seen The Willow Trees"
As one half of the incomparably muscular electric blues duo Deap Vally, Lindsey Troy earned a leather-tough reputation for her no-nonsense feminine perspective and a brassy, larger-than-life presence. Embarking on a new solo journey, Troy reveals a quieter side, one deeply in touch with motherhood and the natural world but still bursting with brilliant vivacity.
“I’ve Seen The Willow Trees” opens with a subdued guitar lead that blissfully wanders beneath a leafy canopy of shimmering synths hovering delicately in the background. Channeling the monumental gothic mysticism of Russian Circles’ “Memorial” with the bucolic spirituality of Joni Mitchell’s iconic “Woodstock” and a dash of Led Zeppelin III’s stripped down saudade, Troy emerges from shadow to tap into elemental essences with breathless sincerity, joyfully spinning in the daffodils and awash in the warmth of nature’s omnipotent embrace.
The track unfurls with the sincerity of a lullaby, passing on maternal wisdom earned through a lifetime’s experience translated into song and abundant with the aspirations carried within the radiant innocence of a child, the living vessel of hopes and dreams and fears made real with the purity of love incarnate. “I’ve Seen The Willow Trees” is a promise to love, guide, and protect communicated gently with playful prose and textural composition as universally understood as the common threads binding mother and child, woven together within the grand tapestry of Mother Nature’s eternal affection for all her children.
In a surprising turn, “I’ve Seen The Willow Trees” makes a tonal shift in the back half, incorporating crystalline keys over a driving beat that stomps with energetic vivacity, transforming the pastoral proceedings into a jubilant explosion of sonic color, like vibrant bougainvillea blooming against perfectly blue springtime skies, a celebration of life and rebirth after a chilly season of slumber.
Swapping the glare of artificial stage lights for golden beams of afternoon sun glittering with prismatic brilliance, husband John Stavas captures Troy with the reverent intimacy of a home movie, awash in the sepia tones and soft focus of a memory whirring across the flickering frames of an old Super 8. Visual layers add a compositional depth that accents the track’s thematic perspective with ghostly remnants of analog film effects and emotive living portraiture that hovers behind Troy’s confident performance, drawing “I’ve Seen The Willow Trees” as close to the artist as possible, deconstructing all barriers except the lens itself to reveal without facade or pretense the beauty and humanity of words and music and light combined into a complete expression of the soul.
Stream “I’ve Seen The Willow Trees” on Spotify and follow Lindsey Troy on Instagram.