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There is something unforgettable about great love songs and Briana Marela’s ‘Call It Love’ wraps its welcoming arms around the subject, invoking all its complexity.

Before writing the songs that would become Call It Love, ‘Briana Marela’ was guided first and foremost by her instincts as a producer and engineer. Marela’s original vision for this album was to dig into the two poles of her songwriting styles: her ambient, ethereal side and her brighter, beat-driven pop leanings. She enlisted the production help of Juan Pieczanski and Ryan Heyner of the band Small Black upon hearing their most recent self-produced album.

On this album, Briana Marela has made her proverbial giant leap, deepening her songwriting and expanding her palette to explore the sounds of love in beautiful, striking new ways. ‘Give Me Your Love’ explores what Marela calls “love’s immature, silly and selfish side.”

‘Quit’, the deep, dramatic centrepiece of ‘Call It Love’, was originally penned about a breakup with a longtime partner and written with the idea that she could give the song away to another artist. Instead, ‘Quit’ is powerful and revealing in Briana’s own hands.

If ‘Be In Love’ is the sound of falling in love, ‘Farthest Shore’ is the sound of looking inward, of reckoning with and without ourselves. It is an intricate, cavernous song, setting a deceptively pretty melody over ominous drones and skittering percussion. Here, again, the contradictory becomes complementary.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Dreamy vocal passages, grooving basses and swirling ethereal synths work together to form a lucid and thoroughly enjoyable suite of slightly mournful indie anthems. Great stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Be In Love
Give Me Your Love
I’m Sorry
He Knows
Quit
Feel What I Feel
Last Time
Call It Love
Farthest Shore
Rise