Taking their name from the Cherokee word for “my friend,” and led by songwriter Emma Hoeflinger, Nashville's Oginalii continue their steady progression as a band, and reveal new single and visual, Scapegoat, from the band's forthcoming sophomore full length, Pendulum. The new album will be following last year's promising, Cause & Affection.
"I began writing the base of the song during a really odd time in my life where a lot of difficult changes and events were happening around me," Hoeflinger comments on the new song. "I felt like some of the people closest to me were beginning to fall out of my reach. One of the main themes of this record is the understanding of the way people change around you and thus, you change as well. The women in my family and the women around me were beginning to change, and it scared the hell out of me. I wanted to hold them all as close as I could, but I realized that I was suffocating them as well as myself by trying to control what wasn’t necessarily something bad. If I want to be someone worthy of these people around me I also have to rise, change, and grow with them. That’s where the chorus came from. I kept trying to come up with something clever, and something that had ‘meaning’. However, sometimes you just need to scream and yell out to the people around you and let go. You have to let go instead of getting swallowed up by your own control."
With a psychedelic rock foundation that often borders on sludge and doom metal, Oginalii offer smart compositions and a kind of ardor which feels entirely their own, while their presentation is very often nothing less than engaging, and Scapegoat is not an exception.
The band's lineup is rounded by Ryan Quarles (guitar), Simon Knudtson (drums) and Emma Lambiase (bass).
Video directed and Edited by Grant Ivie
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ZR