little alien

by Oropendola

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about

Little Alien is a welcome~to~this~realm lullaby-anthem for my now 1-year-old niece, Lucy. It started as a series of sporadic improvisations when she was still floating blissfully in the womb, and the threads all weaved together in one night (at my parents’ house on my childhood piano) after she was born. Months later, I recorded a live harpischord-vocal version at Landon Peer’s house in rural NJ, and added the rest of the arrangement in my Brooklyn bedroom. The mini “orchestra,” some recorded straight through Macbook speakers, is mostly keyboards (a Casio MT100 [which also provided the drum part, meticulously comped to match the rhythmically erratic nature of the original live take], Microkorg, and Korg SV1) as well as a few Logic sounds, harmonies recorded sans mic, and upright bass.

This song is an imagining of little Lucy’s adventure from there to here, a celebration and wide-eyed witnessing of this new weird being. It is an ode to the mysticism, wisdom, and memory of past lives that I suspect are inherent in the baby soul (and then forgotten, little by little), and a plea for some of it to seep back into our fabric. I imagine otherworldly creatures, spirits, and our now-ancestors in raucous celebration with the living, all talking over one another, Lucy’s great-great-aunt Gert pinching her cheeks and saying, “you little mieskeit” (Yiddish, ironic slang for “ugly person” that usually means the opposite), my grandmother Pearl squeezing her granddaughter - Lucy’s mama, my sister - tight, and all of us, past and present, clinking glasses, together, hopeful, here for now.

lyrics

A little alien appeared today
She followed a balloon
Rowin a boat down a long canal
Guided by the full moon

A baby firefly on a darkened sea
A messenger, a ghost
Layers of ancient worlds repeating
And raising up their silver

Oh little alien
Diamond skies and pearls
Oh little alien
Supernatural
Oh little alien
Tell us what you’ve heard

Passing through
Passing through
Passing through

credits

released December 2, 2022
written, performed, produced by Oropendola

harpsichord & lead vocals engineered by Landon Peer
everything else engineered by Oropendola
mixed & mastered by Ryan Weiner
artwork by Katy Pinke

upright bass: Aidan Cafferty
everything else: Oropendola

license

about

Oropendola New York

golden pendulum.

singer-keyboardist-songwriter-arranger-frolicker.

debut Oropendola album Waiting for the Sky to Speak out now <3

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