Portland-based musician Mary Eliza announces her debut album, Spider, with the surprising, devastating single ‘Porcelain.’ In collaboration with Preston Cochran (Lucy Dacus, Illuminati Hotties) and Jake Finch (boygenius, Ashe, Suki Waterhouse) at Trace Horse Studios in Nashville, she turns inward to explore the realities of her chronic illnesses. Spider is out on Jan 17.
While writing the record, Mary Eliza listened to a lot of Mali Velasquez’s new record I’m Green, Big Thief’s Masterpiece, Mitski’s The Land is Inhospitable and so are we, and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; you can hear each bit and piece that resonated from within the ever-unpredictable turns throughout Spider – a record intended to surprise. That is, in part, because life for Mary Eliza must be taken moment by moment, given the struggle with a mystery illness she’s contended with since she was 4 years old. She only got the full diagnosis this year: a heart disorder called POTS, a connective tissue disorder called hEDS, 4 tick-borne illnesses, Lyme Disease, and a rare blood disorder.
Needing to spend several hours per week in the hospital, every day is drastically different for her; “It has ended many relationships in my life and I’m sure it will continue to weed out fake friends. My anger and processing around this illness and the medical system as a whole has come out a lot in the making of this record, and it has felt like such a cathartic experience being able to create the soul scratching feeling that I experience in sound.”
You feel that catharsis immediately upon the opening of single ‘Porcelain,’ which rips into it with a cacophony of electric guitars and manic cymbal crashes, before dissipating into a bare acoustic strum and the gentle pulse of a snare.
Of ‘Porcelain,’ Mary says, “‘Porcelain’ has surprised me from start to finish. I initially wrote it in the snowy, dark days when a relationship of mine was seeming to crumble right in front of me. It started out slow, and timid, as I hadn’t said any of it out loud yet. As the tenderness of the initial seed of song wore off and grew into strength, resilience, and frustration, it began to take new shape. This was a song that I felt really exploded in the studio. Preston really saw my vision and was able to help me execute it. This song encompasses a lot of growth for me, and I hold it close to my heart.”
Spider:
- Dogs
- Fire
- Circles
- The Fall
- Porcelain
- Cerina
- Happiness
- Dissipate
- Spider
- Slow Mover
