Singer-songwriter and trauma-informed story work coach Lora Kelley unveils her latest single, “Man Behind the Curtain.” The second single from her upcoming long player, slated to drop November 7, the song explores what happens when we find out what we believed about someone falls apart.
Kelley explains, “There is a moment that comes for many of us when you realize that who you thought a person was—and who they actually are—are not the same. It’s a disorienting grief. Who were you? Who was I? What do I do with what I thought I knew? What is left when I’m forced to face this reality?”
Produced by Jeremy Casella, the song features a who’s who of musicians: Matt Stanfield (piano), Josh Hunt (drums), Jacob Lowery (bass), Nate Duggar (guitar), and Mike Payne (guitar), with engineering by Evan Redwine.
Kelley shares that the song was partially inspired by Dorothy’s realization in The Wizard of Oz: “As I imagined Dorothy at the end of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ I thought – what does it feel like to wake up to having been sold (by the wizard and then from everyone else) that The Wizard was powerful, only to realize he wasn’t who he said he was, and he wasn’t who anyone said he was. His posture was one of exploitation, a structure of power, an idea, and a fabrication. In fact, nothing that was offered by him to Oz or to her about him was true, real, or helpful. Now what?”
Opening on a lamenting steel guitar, “Man Behind the Curtain” flows into a low-slung Americana melody riding a mid-tempo rhythm. Kelley’s lusciously nuanced vocals imbue the lyrics with complex drawling timbres, at once saddened and slightly wistful, as if wishing for another outcome, one not so unsettling.
Subtle and oh-so graceful, the layered textures of the tune form a vulnerable melody attended by a substratum of hesitation, doubt, and foreboding. It’s a beautiful, evocative song.
Emotionally cathartic, with “Man Behind the Curtain,” Lora Kelley delivers a poignant, haunting expression of revelation.
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