Rachel Lime – STORIES
Rachel Lime is thrilled to announce her new album, STORIES, out April 10th, and in conjunction, shares its lead single, “Elided.”
A collection of fables, each track on STORIES is distinct in color, shape, and shine; like a mosaic set with various, variegated stones—agates from the shore, limestone from forest soil, a lost gemstone from the bottom of the ocean, perhaps a fossilized shell found in a sea cave. “With ‘STORIES,’ I wanted to create a world and bring others into it, to invite them on a journey in the same way that the fantasy books in my library did for me,” states Lime. “So as the album came together, I painted the cover art like a fantasy novel and drew the track list in the form of an old school fantasy map, with mysterious castles, mountains, forest, sea.”
Following in the footsteps of Lime’s debut album, 2021’s A.U., STORIES is similarly about make-believe and the dramatic possibilities of not-quite-autobiographical narrative. “I’ve always been so moved by this idea of humanity trying to contact Someone Out There,” Lime says. “There’s this quote by sci-fi author Arthur C. Clark that goes: ‘Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.’” STORIES carries these themes forward: of longing, of fantasy, of the kind of fiction that is all the more real for not being biographically true.
This is on display on today’s single, “Elided,” which is based on the fantasy/speculative fiction book The Traitor Baru Cormorant. “Elided” is also representative of Lime’s turn towards more rhythmic, synth-driven textures on the album, combining the lush orchestration of her earlier work with more dance-forward grooves.
Like “Elided,” the other tracks on STORIES are similarly a call for listeners to recall half-glimpsed memories, myths, from childhood and beyond. Album opener, “Wild Raspberries,” is a rescued track from when Lime was 19, composing on GarageBand using her laptop keyboard as a MIDI input. The song is, like all good stories, narrative more than fact. “It’s about the fear and yearning I felt about the woods behind my childhood home, summer dusks when I stared through my window at the dark shadows of the trees,” she says. The lyrics are mystical, figurative: “Follow me / I know what you seek / I will lead you to / Wild raspberries.” Lime hopes the wistful, enigmatic dream logic of the song helps listeners “remember something they’ve forgotten.”
Elsewhere, “Secret Garden” references “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by Keats; “Water Lily Bloom” is from the imagined perspective of the Lady of Shalott trapped in her castle, watching the world pass her by. This dreamlike quality is not only reflected in the lyrics. Lime has built each song as its own miniature universe. “It is an album about protagonists who seek pleasure, who are afraid of it, who are intoxicated by it, who grieve the loss of it,” Lime comments. “I wanted to create an album that situates the listener fully in their body, while still playing with the literary, cerebral themes I explored in my earlier work.”
From the sampled traditional Korean pansori vocals on “Jangdan” to the birdsong and breeze that closes the album out on “I Love When Night Falls,” each track on STORIES bristles with the lush flora of a distinct world.
#rachellime