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Jul 05, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Katelyn White

Brooklyn-based indie singer/songwriter Elly Kace returned last year with her sophomore album, Object Permanence, expanding on her lush and layered style of alt pop. In the months since, Kace has been working on a new EP, if i ask enough could you love me, due out on December 1st. The record is her first self-produced project and finds her teaming with a range of classically trained musicians, elevating her roots in opera and classical performance to the fore of her songwriting.

Today, accompanying the announcement Kace is sharing a new single, “prelude (i did my best),” premiering with Under the Radar.

With “prelude (i did my best)” Kace borrows the melody from Chopin’s “Prelude In E Minor” and transmutes it into her style of hypnotic baroque pop. The track opens in a hazy liminal space, with Kace’s vocals wrapped in layers of strings, piano, and thrumming electronic production accents. As this swirl of instrumentation grows, the track steadily coheres into an entrancing blend of old and new textures.

Kace brings a warm and lush presence to her vocals, capturing the classical beauty of Chopin’s melodies, only for a discordant bloom of guitars or violin to divert the track into uncharted territory. Later the track descends entirely into a maze of noise. Meanwhile, the track’s lyrics navigate themes of perfectionism, exploring the pain of connecting one’s self-worth to standards of perceived excellence: “Can’t put breath in my ribs now / A house of cards in my heart / How artless to think you could love me / Even so / I did my best.”

Kace says of the song, “‘Prelude (I did my best)’ is a composition about recognizing perfectionism from a space of self forgiveness. It’s also an attempt to rebalance the divine feminine and masculine, inspired by Chopin’s prelude in e minor. Achieving excellence as a substitute for my own inherent worth was a big accidental part of my classical training I work hard daily to release. I did my best. I do my best. Sometimes it seems never enough. I still struggle to believe in enoughness due to my mind’s attachment to the messaging I’ve always received in my training - that I am not good enough yet”

She continues, “I wanted the music to swirl and bend in a more flexible, feminine way, resisting the structure of the steady eighth notes that permeate the space. You will hear blooms of sound throughout the song that reach away from the predictable. Despite all this, the song has a very rhythmic feel to it, and ironically, the more freedom each musician added to the pot, the more structure the piece needed. At the end I just allowed it to completely turn to noise - it felt like all the musicians involved just needed to let it out. Me included.”

Check out the song below. Elly Kace’s new LP, if i ask enough could you love me is out December 1st.

Track Listing:

01.) prelude (i did my best)

02.) if i ask

03.) enough

04.) could you love me

05.) i wish you were different