The debut release by Mára, the solo project of Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer, Everlovely Lightningheart).
Time. Death. Transcendence. These are the allusions and allegories that Faith Coloccia extends through her piano-bloom plainsongs under her moniker Mára. Her elegant and deceptively simple compositions situate at the crossroads of these grand narratives with all of the existential portent of a spiritualist hymnal; yet there is an intimacy to her visions traced in the delicacy of her touch on the piano and the idiosyncratic etherealism in her lyrical mewl.
Coloccia reflects on such universal themes as an agnostic psalmist -- one seeking answers to the mysteries of being alive on her island, on this planet, in this universe, with the scope of the divine both evident and unknowable. She bares witness to the divine in the human connection and the resonance of the natural order, yet the fears of loss of connection and ultimately death loom large. Her voice lilts in a multi-tracked homophony that entangles itself amidst the gilded reverberation broadcast from the inside out of her arrangements for piano. “Warmth, Shelter, Oblivion” thrums with a simple tone-pulse modified into a blur of echo and tears amidst the dematerialization of her candle flickered voice. Bookended tracks “The Gift Of Life” and “Healing for the Wounded” reprise variations on the same piano melody, to bring full circle Coloccia’s methodology for repetition and difference. The seemingly instrumental track “Flask of Hermes” finds its voice through the radio quietly muttering to itself in the room next to where Coloccia was recording, furthering the transmission of the divine to this mortal coil and back.