From Where You Came, Kara-Lis Coverdale’s first major work since Grafts (2017), was recorded across several continents and completed in rural Ontario. Accordingly, it bears the mark of a communion with the natural world, with compositions attuned to the ebbs and flows of life cycles that get drowned out in urban settings. Two minutes into the flute-driven “Daze,” there’s a synthetic swell that sounds at first like a siren, and then like a chorus of cicadas; as it crests and falls, you might notice yourself exhaling alongside it.
That blurring of organic and electronic is key to the album, which blends strings, woodwinds, brass, and synths in a kind of neon ecosystem. It’s a reminder that circuits, animals, and people all carry an electric charge. Press materials describe From Where You Came as an exploration of grief and dislocation, and while it opens with the elegiac “Eternity,” it also sounds alive with curiosity and possibility, at times even sprightly. “I’m sorry, life is beautiful,” a voice intones on that first track, introducing a thematic marriage of pain and awe that carries throughout. “Equal Exchange” is a sweetly inquisitive piece of program music, with organ notes seemingly calling out to each other; on the dense “Freedom,” sharp metallics and droning brass thrum with vitality. “Anything can have a voice,” claims Coverdale, and she puts that into exquisite practice on From Where You Came, inviting the listener into a conversation beyond language.
ROSIE LONG DECTER is the editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve Magazine in Montreal. She releases music with the band Bodywash and her solo project Una Rose. Her work has appeared in New Feeling, Billboard, This, Xtra, and the anthologies Letters from Montreal (Véhicule, 2022) and Absolute Pleasure (Feminist Press, 2025).