An entrancing, gentle alt-folk seduction, April Marmara’s “Who Knows Where the Love Goes” finds the Portuguese singer/songwriter retelling a family story of love, capturing its endless mystery and magic in the process.
“Who Knows Where the Love Goes” – April Marmara
Love is beautiful, all-consuming, wondrous, and haunting, but perhaps above all else, love is mystical: There’s an enduring air of mystery and magic to this experience that so many of us spend a lifetime pursuing, nurturing, and cherishing. Even when you’re in love, and when you have love in your life, it continues to enthrall and intrigue – always keeping you on your feet, surprising you, and opening new doors you never expected. April Marmara’s latest single is, in some ways, an ode to that mysticism: An entrancing, gentle alt-folk seduction, “Who Knows Where the Love Goes” finds the Portuguese singer/songwriter retelling a family story of love, capturing its endless mystery and magic in the process.
In a town far from the city, a couple met!
But their love was forbidden!
As their age grew older,
their love grew with them too
But soon they asked them selves!
‘where does this love go?’
Well who knows where the love goes?
“Who knows where the love goes?”
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Who Knows Where the Love Goes,” the lead single off April Marmara’s forthcoming sophomore album Still Life, set for release April 14, 2023 via Pipa Marinho’s brand new Lisbon-based label, Lay Down Recordings.
A familiar face in Atwood‘s pages, Marinho themself was featured in a 2019 interview around their debut album ~, which received considerable praise as “an intimate, confessional, and deeply vulnerable” introduction “capturing the raw friction at the heart of our broken, emotional experience.”
“Lay Down Recordings in an independent record label by and for singer/songwriters who wear their hearts on their wool sweater sleeves,” Marinho says of their new label, which they named after Melanie Safka’s hauntingly beautiful folk song, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” “The label is my way of building community and helping fellow artists who, due to my background in music marketing, often ask for my help in building their release strategies. Plus, hanging out with other songwriters is my favorite thing in the world.”
We were so close, there was no room
We bled inside each others wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
– “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” Melanie Safka & the Edwin Hawkin Singers
April Marmara’s “Who Knows Where the Love Goes” is Lay Down Recordings’ debut song release, and her album will also be the label’s first LP. The singer/songwriter, born Beatriz Diniz, introduced herself as April Marmara in 2018, releasing debut album New Home via Lisbon indie Spring Toast Records. With an ambient folk sound and the aesthetic to match, Marmara’s music carries “a sense of stillness and, simultaneously, a quiet unsettledness,” to quote the artist. She describes her new album as a spiritual and artistic step up from her first record, calling it “a deep dive into isolation, loneliness, the quality of human relationships and, most of all, of someone’s relationship to nature and their own place in this world.”
“Just like standing in front of a painting, trying to gather all the meaning that comes with an art piece, Still Life tells me the different meanings of life from constantly observing the passage of time,” Marmara tells Atwood Magazine.
“Who Knows Where the Love Goes” is an alluring, hypnotizing reintroduction to the artist, not to mention a beautiful way for Marinho’s label to begin its journey in the world. The story itself is one the artist has known for as long as she can remember: It’s one of young love – a forbidden love! – that sprang up, and then disappeared for over fifty years, only to return later in life. Or so she sings:
Shortly the woman cried each night as the man
Would never write her back!
And soon she found another loving man!
After fifty years her husband died of age
And their children kept her safe!
It was then she heard a call saying
Well who knows where the love goes?
“Who knows where the love goes?”
“’Who Knows Where the Love Goes’ is a family story,” Marmara explains. “It’s as if my grandmother is telling it to me for the first time, and I just made a musical arrangement on top of it.”
One can only imagine the experience of having lived a lifetime with one partner – making a family with them; creating a legacy with them – and then much later on, having sadly lost them, you rediscover and rekindle an old flame that dates back to your earliest years. This reunion has a bittersweet tinge to it, surely, but there’s no denying its magic and mystery – and these are the qualities that shine brightest through Marmara’s performance. Whether you can relate to her family story or not, “Who Knows Where the Love Goes” will have you enchanted from start to finish.
Stream April Marmara’s stunning new single exclusively on Atwood Magazine! Her sophomore album Still Life is out April 14, 2023 via Lay Down Recordings.
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“Who Knows Where the Love Goes” – April Marmara
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