Canadian experimental/indie-pop singer Devon Welsh and his collaborator/producer Matthew Otto, AKA Majical Cloudz, release new song “Your Eyes.”
Photo by Denis Nazarov
“Sun in your skin/water in your eyes,” croons experimental/indie-pop singer Devon Welsh, AKA Majical Cloudz, in his new song “Your Eyes.” Am I the only one who hears this lyric and visualizes the orange sun ascending the African plains in the opening of The Lion King?
Canadian Devon Welsh, son of actor Kevin Welsh, began his solo project Majical Cloudz in 2010, when he released his first EP Earth to a Friend/Mountain Eyes. In 2011, LP II was released on Arbutus Records. After that, collaborator and producer Matthew Otto joined Welsh for the making of the EP Turns, Turns, Turns in 2012.
The inspiration behind the EP, which Welsh told Sarah O’Driscoll at Dummy, started with the idea that “[it should be] just as simple as possible – down to just the emotions and lyrics – it should all be direct and it should all be facilitating the energy of it. So all the songs are recorded with all these simple loops and vocals on top.”
Welsh, who went to school with Clare Boucher (electro-princess Grimes) at McGill University in Montreal, was featured in her 2012 song “Nightmusic.” Vice versa, Grimes was featured in Majical Cloudz 2011 song “Dream World.”
In 2013, Majical Cloudz released their second album Impersonator, which was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. Jayson Greene at Pitchfork called the album, “A gorgeous record– extraordinarily sung, hypnotically focused– but it is Welsh’s sense of emotional urgency that makes it special.”
Welsh’s “sense of emotional urgency” is present in Majical Cloudz’s new release, song “Your Eyes,” that uses strong upfront vocals backed by simple drum loops and light piano. In a recent press statement, Welsh said of the song, “It’s kind of a relic of the earliest period of our life as a band… this will take you back to the beginning of our music-making days together.”
Originally recorded in 2011, the song was re-recorded with Matthew Otto before the pair went on a North American tour this fall, with none other than indie-pop queen Lorde, who is a huge fan.
At Dummy, O’Driscoll writes that Welsh performs “with a voice so rich, so powerful and so present that it was impossible to move your eyes from him.”
Lorde agrees. She recently tweeted to her fans, “if you haven’t seen this man perform you are in for an intensely emotional and raw treat.”
Welsh told Pitchfork, “(Lorde’s act) is similar to my interests and aesthetic preferences — how the stage is set up and how she performs,” Welsh says. “When I was informed that they were interested in having us on the tour, I was very excited. I thought it made a lot of sense.”
To finish off the tour and to give their fans a new song to obsess over, Majical Cloudz dropped “Your Eyes” at the opportune time. A beautiful song full of raw emotion and minimal instrumentals, “Your Eyes” is hopefully a precursor to what we can expect from Majical Cloudz in their bright future.
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