Premiere: Cloudbelly’s Intimate “Leavened” Reckons & Soothes in the Eye of the Inner Storm

Born in a rare space of calm and tranquil introspection, Cloudbelly’s beautiful new song “Leavened” aches with stirring intimacy, impassioned immediacy, and raw, vulnerable emotion.

Stream: “Leavened” – Cloudbelly

… sometimes I’m a cowboy and sometimes, I’m a girl, but mostly I’m a pale blue thief whose water drank the world…

Born in a rare space of calm and tranquil introspection, Cloudbelly’s new song aches with stirring intimacy, impassioned immediacy, and raw, vulnerable emotion. It’s the kind of visceral inward-looking reflection we experience only occasionally in our lives, and often by accident: A moment of truth and upheaval that centers us, rebalancing our perspectives and bringing an order to our daily chaos. As beautiful as it is gutting, “Leavened” is a special kind of song that inevitably leaves us better than we were before, inspiring listeners to own our stories, embrace our full selves, and rise up to the day.

ground sung up the flowers
light leavened the day
birdsong shook my dusty ribbons
and sent me on my way

and chimes walked on a windstorm,
wires steadied a breeze,
and rain carried my worry off
to bury in the leaves

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Leavened,” Cloudbelly’s fourth overall song release and their second single of 2022 (out April 14, 2022 via Signature Sounds Recordings). The artist moniker for singer/songwriter Corey Laitman, Cloudbelly first came into our worlds late last year through the double-single “Up in Smoke” and “Soft as the Mouths.” Welcoming the artist as one of our 2022 Artists to Watch, Atwood Magazine praised Cloudbelly as “a refreshing newcomer” whose music is both cathartic and substantive:

“Cloudbelly envelop their audience in the raw awe of nature’s beauty and life’s possibility on their initial offering, creating a tender world of palpable emotion through music that feels up-close and personal, yet distanced all at the same time… Delicate acoustic-electric instrumentation and warm harmonies help Laitman’s evocative lyrics come to life: Their words evoke a serene kind of turmoil – the calm before (and after) an inevitable storm.”

Cloudbelly returned at the top of 2022 with the sweetly charming “Whistling,” a cathartic folk enchantment rich with thought-provoking lyrics, charming vocal harmonies, and comforting fingerpicked guitar work – all of which come together to create a kind of organic aural blanket.

The same conclusion can be made of “Leavened,” though Laitman gets there through a very different route. A song of space and solitude, softness and reverie, Cloudbelly’s latest is a gentle giant of self-expression: The kind of song whose emotions melt around the ears as the artist plunders the depths of their very soul. Using poetic language and singing with great care, Laitman expresses wonder and uncertainty, fear and hope, and so much more:

time spooled out a distance
this distance, I know
I’ve been swum across the waters,
lanterns full of snow

“I think I’ve always gone to music to discover a softer, more spacious place to get slow and sort through my inner whirling,” Laitman tells Atwood Magazine. “Temperamentally, I’m prone to experiencing life as engrossing and intense, so the act of intentional meaning-making — really taking my time finding the words that, to me, feel actually indwelled by a feeling –brings me a lot of lightness and settling.”

“I wrote ‘Leavened’ inside the eye of a sort of inner-storming; I’d been waking in the morning with this relentlessly leaden feeling. I started fiddling with my ukulele in an increasingly rare moment where my mind had quieted, miraculously – and I could feel my body, its soft weight on the couch where I was sitting, and the morning light was having this golden moment – and out came this terribly gentle, surreal lullaby.”

An enthralling song that soothes the nerves and pacifies our turbulent minds, “Leavened” arrives alongside the announcement of Cloudbelly’s forthcoming debut album: thou / them is set to release this Fall via Signature Sounds. For now, get lost and found in Cloudbelly’s latest single, exclusively on Atwood Magazine!

and sometimes I’m a cowboy
and sometimes, I’m a girl
but mostly I’m a pale blue thief
whose water drank the world

ooh, ooh

honey, you’re reminding me x 4

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:: stream/purchase “Leavened” here ::

Stream: “Leavened” – Cloudbelly

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