We sure love a good collaboration here across the pink digital pages of Vanyaland, especially when it includes Julien Baker. Fresh off her AOTY contender in February’s Little Oblivions, the acclaimed songwriter has teamed with The Ophelias for their ardent new single, “Neil Young on High.” The melancholic strings-laden track comes with news the Cincinnati-born, Ohio-and-NYC-based band will release sophomore album Crocus on September 24 via Joyful Noise Recordings.
“We met Julien for the first time in 2019 at a show we played in Nashville,” says Ophelias’ vocalist and guitarist Spencer Peppet. “She introduced herself (as if we didn’t already know who she was) and I tried to not show how nervous I was! About half a year into 2020 quarantine I worked up the nerve to ask if she wanted to feature on a song from the album we were working on. She said yes, and I was seriously over the moon. She recorded her parts in Tennessee and we talked virtually. Her harmonies reinvigorated the song completely: She added lightness, openness, but also depth and complexity. It’s incredibly cool that she put so much care into those parts.”
Baker only adds to an already incredible composition, which floats with an urgency and gathers at the core of casual expectancy. Peppet adds: “After a relationship ended I would become obsessed with remembering every detail of the painful moments. I realized later that I don’t have to know what I was wearing or what song was playing to know that I was hurt deeply. I think ‘on high’ means seeing someone as literally above you, better and cooler and more put together. I imagine it like paintings of angels, a halo of white light around a person to differentiate them from the laymen. I do love Neil Young, but in this case he represents a person, a time, a place.”
Listen in, intently, below, and gaze those eyes upon the incredible video.