Caroline Pernick - “breathing in the walls”

Caroline Pernick is a 23-year-old singer-songwriter from New York. While she claims that the best album of all time is Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus, she makes up for it by also drawing personal inspiration from the likes of Joni Mitchell and Maggie Rogers, a favorite at UpToHear. Pernick has an EP dropping this winter, so we wanted to try and get her latest single, “breathing in the walls,” into as many ears as humanly possible.

Before we even listened to the track, we noticed in the description that her upcoming EP is a “haunting indie pop record that explores Pernick's relationship with mortality, fear of wasted time, and the idea that as long as something is remembered it keeps on existing.” So, given our love for the existential and potentially darker subject matter, we knew we were about to listen to something special.

As you may have noticed, we are quite fond of sparse recordings that allow emotion to fill in the gaps of an otherwise raw production. And that is exactly how “breathing in the walls” begins– with what might be the muted strings of a cello? Or some cool effect on a bass? The point here is that it’s all the listener can hear until the synthy little melody comes sweeping in, clearing a path for Pernick’s lovely vocal, which guides us through the thoughts of death that people often have, yet hold inside so as not to scare the ones closest to them. Then comes the fantastic crescendo and a glimpse at the power of her voice and this is precisely the point that you’ll find yourself sending the track to all of your friends and moving it to the top of your playlists.

Pernick is definitely one to watch and we have no doubt that she will find much success if she keeps releasing songs like this one. See for yourselves:

-TM