On "Entwine," the singer-songwriter Whitney Cline emerges from a decade of musical quietude with the inaugural single from her new project, Astara Black, a song that seems both ancient and newly formed. Rooted in indie rock and indie pop, the song blossoms into a poetic invocation, a poignant yet somber reentry into the sonic world for an artist who values intention nearly as much as melody. Cline's voice, now known as Astara Black, bears the weathering of time and the velvet of wisdom.
Fans of artists like Feist, Hope Sandoval, or Neko Case will find familiar emotive textures in Cline's song, but there's something uniquely Cline in her delivery. It's as though she's not singing so much as breathing something sacred into the liminal verge between sound and silence. Brought up on the coasts of Massachusetts and Maine and now based in Los Angeles, it would seem that Cline's peripatetic journey to artistry, which included a trenchant face-first dive into acting at RADA and Rutgers, birthed an artist highly attuned to nuance and embodiment. "Entwine" reflects that artistry. It touches on transformation, sensuality, and sacred connection to the earth, not as a mere muse but as an actual, participatory, and becoming thing.
"Entwine" doesn't rush. It unfolds. The pacing is deliberate, as if walking in a dewy, canopied forest at dawn, each moment observed with care, each of a whole host of layers chosen for its resonance. From its earthy acoustic strums to his softly glowing harmonies, the track feels less like a single than a ritual. There's a humility to it and also a quiet power. The lyrics ripple through the song like a mantra for moving on and growing again. And that's the soul of "Entwine," a reckoning with the past, a planting of new seeds, and a trust in nature's quiet magic to bring them to bloom. In this debut, Astara Black challenges us to listen with open hearts and full presence.
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