Album Notes

"From the outset, a lullabye keyboard motif drifts through the smoky ether of Lachica's voice. The guitar and drums rumble in hushed tones before building and retreating like a wave. In the hands of other musicians, "Bewilder" might have sounded too calcuating, too exacting, but Lachica evokes just the right mélange of hushed brittleness and frost-bitten pathos. Her down-tempo, early-dawn soundscapes enrapture the heart and transport the mind." --Kyle Lemmon/Under the Radar

'Baltimore, Maryland-born Elaine Lachica has got a voice to cry for! The Peabody Conservatory trained soprano bends, undulates, quivers, and extends notes and syllables across the 14 songs of her third long player I Think I Can See the Ocean. Her voice, both as a single instrument and as the main attraction, is as much a burden as it is a blessing. It challenges and obscures to the same extent that it soothes and transcends. Breathy at times, and somewhat reminiscent of the supremely talented Cassandra Wilson, Ms. Lachica’s voice begins a seven-song stretch, from the rumbling opener “Behind My Mind” to the melancholy orchestral “Wild Wielding”, that is urgent, diverse, and impressive. Ms. Lachica soars through much of the material, including the fabulously dissonant and clap-happy “Tumbleweed” along with the bubbling bassline and jangling strums of “Jinx the Line”. --Quentin Huff/PopMatters

"To think of this music in terms of visual representation: The piano is the tumbleweed, the rest is either the breeze blowing it along, or the empty, wide-open scenery. Lachica’s voice is mannered but highly expressive, fluttering and contracting as the melody swirls around the contours of the chord structure. As much as this song has that quality of direct representation, it’s also an odd, abstracted thing. Listening, I feel like trying to trace its lines, follow them around to find the beginning and the end, but I get lost somewhere, or my attention shifts to some small detail that has me chasing that to its logical conclusion. The song is all a tangle, but it moves so gracefully." --Matthew Perpetua/Fluxblog


"When New York-based classical soprano Elaine Lachica wears her singer/songwriter gown, she cuts a serpentine path between the dream-like shrouds of the Cocteau Twins and the jazzy, rhythmic delicacy of Stina Nordenstam. The Baltimore-born, Peabody-trained Lachica soars through the same sort of genre-less ether: On her third album, I Think I Can See the Ocean, Lachica steers her arresting, haunting voice into underground tunnels of nervous beauty and down-tempo meditations." --Bret McCabe/Baltimore City Paper