Ba Da Bing Records releases “Centreville,” the new single from Wendy Eisenberg’s forthcoming album Auto, out October 16th. Like much of Auto, “Centreville” explores hard emotions, complementing the difficult exploration with captivatingly complex guitar and bitonal vocal melody. The song acts as an anxious cog on the album, whipping up a nervous frenzy which the ensuing songs spend examining with a calmer sense of reflection. But there’s no question the anxiety is born here. You hear it in Eisenberg’s voice, strained with uneasy tension as they directly address their assaulter. Singing in sardonic timidity, amidst a tornado of anxious computer sounds and guitar, Eisenberg asks “Did you care about me? / Did you know you never asked for my permission?” The result is a torrential downpour in a song, unnerving but unforgettable in its power.
The video for “Centreville,” directed by Hannah Swayze & Daniel Contaldo, blends animation with reality; one Wendy plays the complex guitar parts, another Wendy materializes to represent the mind’s splitting off at the onset of trauma.
Wendy Eisenberg on “Centreville”: “I wrote Centreville as a way to musically mimic the dissociation that happened when I was attacked. To perform the song I have to completely separate my singing from my playing, which basically means separating my body from my mind. The unrelenting material on the guitar distracts me from the intensity of the subject matter so I don’t flash back, while at the same time I’m trying to make a clear, direct address to my assaulter. It’s a paradox of intentions that represents the complexity of a very formative moment in my life.”
