At the start of this month, Dorothea Paas announced her debut album and shared the title track “Anything Can’t Happen”, and she follows it up today with another glimpse of what’s to come on the LP called “Container”. Discussing its themes, she says:
“I think of many of my songs as “love songs about not being in love”… It’s a love song about anxiety and the lifelong relationship that I have with it. Will it ever evaporate, or is it mine forever? And then: Of course, it’s always going to be mine.”
Paas takes a gentle approach to these large ideas, drawing inspiration from Karen Dalton’s “Something on your Mind” in the way her whispering guitar wades outwards and then returns back to its origin (“I wanted my song to have a sense of ‘home’ to continually re-center the stream-of-consciousness lyrics that take the listener around the spiral,” Paas says). Along with shuffling drums and minute sparkles of keys, Paas evocatively places us in a warming world where she can observe her anxiety with passivity; “really it’s just a container for my thoughts,” she muses. Following the golden tread of her guitar, she follows this train of thought further, touching on many neuroses – “worry is like water, trying to get to the lowest point” – but she leaves them aside as she ambles into a place of greater comfort. With her simply stunning vocal harmonising with the sun-kissed instrumentation, she takes us softly by the hand and guides us to this garden of acceptance with her.
Ryan Al-Hage directed and edited the video for “Container”, which you can watch below. Otherwise find the song on streaming platforms.
Dorothea Paas’ debut album Anything Can’t Happen comes out on May 7 via Telephone Explosion. You can find her on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
