Gaelynn Lea releases a new single "Starving"

 There's something beautifully relaxing about Gaelynn Lea's most recent release, "Starving." As a track on her new concept album "Music From Macbeth," the song is a clarion call for a reckoning. Intended as the first musical cue for the 2022 Broadway production of Macbeth with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, "Starving" never made it to the stage in time for opening. But now, liberated from the constraints of live theater, it appears in its purest, most haunting state.

And with "Starving," Lea establishes the drab emotional tenor, a chilling bell that rings out not in anticipation of what's ahead but of the unraveling that has already begun. It's Macbeth's karmic siren song, full of unease and freighted with dread. It veers into the spellbinding as only a pure-hearted song can, translated back into shadowy halls of ambition and guilt.

Gaelynn's violin work is spectral, sometimes whispering, at others howling and always probing that emotional no-man's land between fear and fate. This is not background music. It's the kind of track that stops time and yanks you into the dark edges of Shakespeare's world, but this world is hers.

"Starving" is also one of the entry points into a deeply personal project. "Music From Macbeth" is Lea's original vision, reconstructed from an unsliced, unedited, non-theatrical soundtrack cut. Each one feels deliberate, saved from compromise, and "Starving" takes the cake with a subdued ferocity that echoes in your ears long.

Touring the UK to support the release, Gaelynn performs these songs on stages in England, Wales, and Scotland until May 25. One can only imagine what sort of vibe she'd bring live. But even with nothing to see but the recording, "Starving" still does what all good theater and good music are supposed to do. It warns, it's moving and, above all, impossible to ignore.

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