Los Angeles-based musician Zella Day has teamed up with Natalie Mering a.k.a. Weyes Blood for a new song called ‘Holocene’ (via Concord Records). The track was co-written by Day, Mering, and Mia Kerr, while Mering also contributed keyboards and co-production. Check it out below.
“Zella and I already had a sisterhood thing going on, and it made sense to get a song together that captured the uneasiness of these times, the acceleration of uncertainty,” Mering said in a press release.
Day explained:
These days it seems music is the only superpower I can count on to protect me from the threats that lurk within the complete unknown. If hope were a paper airplane and shot into the sky I grabbed it with my hands as it was floating by and unfolded the paper to absorb the contents inside. ‘Crazy Train’ was scribbled at the top of the page and when I looked to see what the words were that were bleeding through from the other side of the paper ‘Holocene’ was there waiting to be sung. There was laughter in the room when the songs were made, tears being shed on the other sides of the walls, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I didn’t cry in the studio too. We’ve all needed a refuge this year, this is a glimpse into mine.
Over the last year I have found myself living in two conflicted mental states: days where I’m impassioned, so many words and thoughts surrounding our current climate extending throughout my being. The other reality is emptiness, a complete loss for words. Exhaustion. Loneliness. Sometimes loneliness becomes a giant casting a long shadow that I can’t outrun. I learned not to be too hard on myself in these moments, ultimately trusting that the motivation to create would eventually come back to me. ‘Holocene’ was the rain that fell. It’s a collection of thoughts, a song for the interpersonal relationship between the world inside and outside of ourselves.
Last year, Zella Day released the Dan Auerbach-produced Where Does the Devil Hide EP. Her last most recent album was 2015’s Kicker. Weyes Blood released her latest album, Titanic Rising, back in 2019.