Larysa Musick - “Wishbone”

Photo by Laina Brown

Winnipeg, Manitoba-based singer-songwriter Larysa Musick has brought the raw sounds of her psychedelic freak-folk to the pages of our blog with her latest release, “Wishbone.”

Pressing play on this number opens your ears to a cornucopia of vintage-tinged sound, including the confident strums of an acoustic guitar amidst a rhythm section that is primarily comprised of upright bass and gentle percussion. Straight out of the gate, an immediate highlight here is the ghostly ambience of the lap steel, which is simply one of the most ethereal instruments we’ve ever heard, and we marvel at the way that it soars through the treetops of this arrangement.

Musick’s vocal appears after a couple of bars, completely free of any audible tuning– to our ears, it would translate quite wonderfully to a live setting. And to be perfectly honest, this track instantly resonated with us once we heard Musick’s vibrato, which we found to be, at times, reminiscent of Fiona Apple, one of our favorite singer-songwriters. It is not at all difficult to find hints of your own quest for a direction in this life within the song’s lyrics– they read as if poetry and would easily stand on their own, without any music at all.

The sounds of the late ‘50s/ early ‘60s can be found once the chorus arrives, with each element in the arrangement maintaining an organic integrity, void of any semblance to the digital age. For this precise reason, it is very easy to imagine Musick and her band sitting around a single microphone, performing “Wishbone” all in one go. And this is exactly why we love it– it’s raw, stripped-back, and emotionally-charged, which are all the prized ingredients required for a song to earn its place here. You’ll know what we mean as soon as you’ve heard it.

-HD