VARYA shares EP “Oh Them Rivers”

VARYA - Oh Them Rivers EP
Album Release: OUT NOW!
Genres: Indie, Folk, Alternative, Ambient, Singer-Songwriter
Format: DR, Vinyl
FFO: Bjork, Regina Spector, Agnes Obel, Emily Wells, AURORA.

Tracklist:
1. Open Fears

2. The Fight

3. Unwild

4. Mold

5. Oh Them Rivers

6. Lady Please

7. Lions Den

“Interesting and introspective” - Escudero

 “Infectious” - Justine Newsome

"Unique" - E.M.I

VARYA, a Moldavian-born, singer-songwriter creates music that is painfully sincere. Considering herself to be, firstly, a poet at heart, she began writing songs at age 14 and has written countless songs and poems. A daughter of a renowned Moldavian musician and poet, her writings and
performances feel as pure and effortless as breathing. They are, in every way, extensions of her soul. To her, music is self-therapeutic, as she puts, “everyone else is just welcome to come along for the ride.”
Having traveled extensively and having explored many of the world’s musical cultures, her immersive style captivates, hypnotizes, and creates a three dimensional world of her own, which is impossible to enter without being emotionally drawn in.
VARYA's sophomore album, Oh Them Rivers EP, is a musical depiction of her inner world reflecting the macrocosmos we live in. It is filled with mysticism, coded lyrics, existential symbolism, and cinematic imagery. While VARYA’s 1st album, Bugbomb, was an intimate portrayal of a young woman dealing with love and loss, Oh Them Rivers EP, is a meditative prayer filled with hypnotic arrangements and the brilliant use of back vocals, reminiscent of various ethnic vocal cultures. This is an uncompromising record which seems like it was written for listening during the end of the world, or yet another world crisis.

The Recording Process:
As for many artists, Oh Them Rivers was a product of the pandemic. “I wrote Oh Them Rivers at a time in my life when I was feeling very stuck. I felt like some light had been extinguished and all I could see around me was a lot of suffering, fear, anger, resentment, regret, jealousy. It was a sort of loss of innocence, an awakening to all the scary things in the world that just dragged me down into this existential dread. And I suppose I was looking for a light, a way to live a little better and brighter, be softer and kinder. So these 7 songs came out, each in a way showing a different exploration of that idea: How to let go of the things that break your hearts, join the fight for a gentler, kinder more sincere future, find our wild free, childlike selves, step outside our rusty old molds, how to run with the rivers and how to fly free. I was writing these songs first and foremost for myself because I needed to hear this message. But, when I started sharing these songs I saw how deeply people felt them and thought that they too must have been looking for a similar light. So I finally decided to record and share this EP with the world. The pandemic was the perfect time to hide in a quiet basement for a few months and work on it without many distractions.”

VARYA BAND:
VARYA - Writer, Composer, Producer, Vocals, Guitar
Gene Chaban - Electronic Production, Mixing, Miscellaneous Instruments
Rey Cortes - Drums
Leonid Tomilchik - Bass
Misha Kuznetsov - Trumpet, Clarinet
Kamilla Linder - Piano
Anthime Miller - Cello
Maria Triana - Mastering

Track Descriptions by VARYA:
Open Fears
Open Fears is the first song I have written for this album, and it felt like a perfect opening song. It's a story about letting go, about allowing for imperfections and harsh realities of someone's being to exist freely without judgment or negative effects of it on your own happiness. It's an end-of-love song, a plea to let go of the people and things that are no longer serving us.
"It doesn't have to be so hard to hold my cold and slippery heart. Let it slip. It doesn't have to be so hard. Take all the things that break your heart, Let 'em go."

The Fight
This song was actually inspired by Virginia Woolf, who is my favorite writer and a massive inspiration in a lot of my writing. At the time I was just discovering her work and being completely blown away by her brain, her life, her writing, and by her death. She spent her whole life revolutionizing the world around her, fighting for women’s rights, redefining sexuality and gender norms, and changing the landscape of the entire world of English literature. And it killed her, literally. In the end she took her own life by walking into a river never to come back up. So, in The
Fight, I was trying to depict that moment of “walking into the white wild waves” dying for, or maybe, because of the weight of the fights that we put up in this world. I thought it was fascinating and heartbreaking and beautiful.

Unwild
This in my view is another love song in a way. An odd to our planet, humanity, greed, and how we have lost touch with ourselves as part of the natural, wild world around us. " While the wind in my hair turns a black cloud, you and I are getting Unwild"

Molds
This is a song that will always be very near and dear to my heart. It's about getting out of our rusty, factory-made molds; the boxes we were born, raised, and conditioned into - "We are made from our brother's bones, seeing with our mothers' eyes, afraid of our own". This song always inspires me as it invites the listener (and truthfully even myself, every time I sing it) to step out of that mold, trust their intuition, take that leap of faith, and follow the beat of their own heart instead of someone else's.

Oh Them Rivers
Oh Them Rivers, the title track, follows Molds quite neatly, I think, as it picks up on the same idea of stepping out of one's own comfort zone, stepping out of one's own way in order to find more love, kindness, and softness in life. When we live and operate from a place of fear we often see the world as untrustworthy, cruel, and full of malice. From that viewpoint, it is nearly impossible to see someone's good intent or your own potential for goodness. So, once more, I invite the listener to step out of that stagnant space. But, in order to do this we must let go of certainty and surrender to the greater unknowns in life - "Oh them rivers, running blind and heartless, let me run with them, don't let me drown in these still waters."

Lady, Please
Lady Please, similar to The Fight, follows the theme of a metaphorical death. Except this time I think the lesson really is to stay grounded, stay here and learn to live in this world we built, to find harmony with what is rather than seek (and die for) an idea and an ideal that may or may not exist in the first place. “There is still so much you could be, so much you could give, so much you could love”. “She murdered her soul for a wonder” when she could’ve chosen to stay and maybe, instead of fighting, to try and find peace by allowing the world to be exactly as it is.

Lion's Den
Lion's Den is once more painting a picture of what happens when we don't follow our hearts and instead follow someone else's rulebook, perating from a place of fear. We are so afraid of trusting ourselves, our own intuition. It is so much easier to just follow lead, trusting blindly that someone else will somehow magically hold the answers for us.

"While the lier dances on your shoulder wearing all white, I follow looking down, arms tied behind, I am ready to
fight. But there's no one left to fight..."