New Music from Miranda Lee Richards – “First Light of Winter”

Singer/songwriter Miranda Lee Richards has led a pretty free-spirited life to date. Growing up in San Francisco with parents connected to the underground comix scene; modeling in Paris; learning guitar from a member of Metallica, then joining The Brian Jonestown Massacre; releasing three solo albums of pastoral, psychedelic folk-rock.

After a six-year break, she returns with a new album that expands, matures and solidifies her sound, while still retaining a whiff of patchouli and the otherworldly glow of black lamps. To be released on Invisible Hands Music at the end of the month, Echoes of the Dreamtime is anchored by the near-seven minute-long track, “First Light of Winter,” which ebbs & flows with a not-so-subtle feeling of menace.

Richards describes the track as “about the first waning of the light in the fall, signaling the potential danger ahead. Heading into winter time ill-prepared, you find yourself in a very dangerous and precarious situation that only the strong will survive. The song is about flirting with darkness and all the resisting and trying that goes into avoiding it. You are using every tool you have at that time, but they aren’t working, and you finally hit bottom. Once you’re there, you have no choice but to surrender to the pain and regret of mistakes and circumstance. It is ironically, at that point, that you learn the lessons that allow you to begin the ascension process, releasing victimhood. It is about surviving a deep depression, and being all the stronger, and wiser for it.” Heavy stuff, but couched in such a beautiful arrangement, we can safely ride along with her & all come out the other side better for it.