Track of the Day: Alela Diane - "The Way We Fall"

Although I don’t normally find myself pining for a great breakup album, Alela Diane’s About Farewell has quickly become one of my most anticipated albums of the year. After watching her perform at a rather intimate club here in Portland over a year ago, where she now resides, it was clear that Diane was on to a mature, gut-wrenching record. But for however heartbreaking About Farewell might actually end up being, Diane’s unshakable grace and beauty will surely pervade. On “The Way We Fall,” the first single from About Farewell, Diane demonstrates how traditional songwriting and storytelling still has a place in recorded music; a two-act song that celebrates both the lingering effects of a divorce and the hopeful winds in the wake. When she sings "I can still evoke / the stale smoke / of his cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes," there's a hauntingly dark tale at work. Sonically serene, poetically moving, “The Way We Fall” is exhaustive in the best sense of the term.