Premiere: ELTA stitches assurances to stay ‘Together’
Synth-pop upstart honors a friend, who was on the cusp of divorce, with a new track.
The divorce rate has been in gradual decline since the 1980s. That’s in huge part, as Time observes, to the growing commitment amongst millennials to stick it out when the going gets tough. 2016 research suggests young people were 18 percent less likely to separate than those in 2008. That promising statistic signals an ever-evolving social landscape that could cause considerable outward ripple effects. Synth-pop newcomer ELTA (real name Alta Keller, most known for her work in The Prams) was a spectator to such a crucial time in a friend’s life, teetering on the edge of divorce but the marriage vows ringing clearer than ever.
With a new song titled “Together,” a constellation of vocal distortions and percussive emissions, the Minnesota native drags her heart out of sticky webs for an earnest, emotionally-wrought manifesto. “I just want you to know / You don’t ever have to be alone,” Keller sings, a thin veil of lace concealing the anguish in her eyes. Diamond-shaped tears well up behind her eyelids, but she rips them back in and away from the light. In so collecting herself, illustrating strength and maturity, she is better capable to navigate the impending hailstorm. “You’re scared of staying / Looking for a way out to run / But I’m not leaving.”
Keller, whose voice operates as both a potent coolant and a sharp wooden spear, alleviates the scorching temperatures with a muted vocal performance. The expansive blanket of stars rise and fall, heaving beneath the tension that soon deflates in windy gusts. “This past year I watched a dear friend of mine fight for her marriage against all odds. The strength and perseverance she showed deeply affected everyone around her,” Keller tells B-Sides & Badlands, premiering the spacey, heart-rending ode today. “I wrote the lyrics from what I felt must be going through her mind. The chorus, I think, hits home with so many relationships. Sometimes you just need to ‘stay’; you just have to stick it out and work at it to get through the dark spaces into a lighter reality.”
“Together” whets the appetite for ELTA’s brand new self-titled EP, out this Friday (March 15).
Listen below:
