Imagine if Billie Eilish better realized all the shadowy, hushed potential she offered on “When We All Fall Asleep”, Where Do We Go? on her follow-up effort. Well, her recent sophomore record would have embodied something akin to “Color of the Pool”, the latest single from Lala Lala, the solo project of Chicago-based musician Lillie West. “Color of the Pool” is also the second track unveiled from her forthcoming album, I Want The Door To Open, out Oct. 8 on Hardly Art.
With West’s vivid ASMR whispers floating through a sparse percolating synth atmosphere, this low-key number is full of surprising drama. In fact, West keeps listeners glued to their seats, even if she’s waxing poetic about something abstract and unattainable to the casual listener, like “wanting to embody the characteristics of something pure and uncatchable, like a flame,” West reveals. The track’s potent pensiveness, instead, lies within the artist’s brave willingness to use silence to her advantage, wielding the song’s slight musical components to augment the closeness of her voice, though subdued in and of itself. This is the case until it isn’t as “Color of the Pool” closes the scene with a spazzed-out saxophone solo via Adam Schatz (Landlady) that pulls the rug from beneath her stilled listeners.
With the release of this new single, Lala Lala has shared an accompanying music video, produced by Weird Life Films, that sees West ride on the back of a motorcycle through artificial projections of Chicago at night. But as the song follows through, the projections become more vivid. By the end of the video, it is no longer clear whether the city she floats through is actual, which in turn, hammers home the single’s concept of toeing the fragile line between reality and simulation.
Check out “Color of the Pool” and its music video below and catch Lala Lala on Twitter and Instagram.
