Victoria Victoria’s latest single “Jacob’s Ladder” is a dreamy alt-folk reverie that gently aches as she unpacks existential angst one rung at a time.
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Stream: “Jacob’s Ladder” – Victoria Victoria
It was nice to dream again… it was nice to see your face again, even if I never see your face again…
They say there’s power in dreams; that those nighttime visions are our subconscious soul’s means of communicating with our conscious mind. Sometimes there’s a lesson to be learned – a moral or message we’re not picking up on in our conscious comings and goings. Sometimes, we’re reunited with familiar faces – loved ones from the past, who are no longer with us in the present.
And sometimes, the questions and challenges we’re actively working through manifest themselves in new ways through our dreams, leading us to see our lives with a fresh perspective – an alternate lens we might not have otherwise found. Such is the case with Victoria Victoria’s latest single, “Jacob’s Ladder,” a dreamy alt-folk reverie that gently aches as she unpacks existential angst one rung at a time.
I dreamt like Jacob
I was wrestling with God
In the end I won
I had a vision of myself
In robes of gold
Doing everything in my power to stay
Oh it was nice to dream again
Oh it was nice to see your face again
Oh it was good to think of you out loud
Independently released February 16, 2024, “Jacob’s Ladder” is Victoria Victoria’s second song of the year (following January’s “Therapist’s Armchair”) and the third single taken off her forthcoming third album, Sweetest Ache (out May 17, 2024).
A collaboration between Victoria Victoria’s Tori Elliott and singer, songwriter, and producer Charlie Hunter, Sweetest Ache is a beautiful, at times breathtaking collection of candid snapshots delving deep into Elliott’s world.
No stranger to these pages – Atwood Magazine premiered her 2019 EP When to Talk, When to Pray, and named its track “Sanctuary” as one of our top songs of that year – Victoria Victoria has always had a way of enchanting our ears whilst inspiring our hearts. Her 2022 album To the Wayside represented her first collaboration with Charlie Hunter, a seasoned veteran of the industry himself – having first come to prominence in the early 1990s. Together, the pair have continued to find their shared voice as a dynamic duo of sorts, releasing a plethora of singles and the six-track Victoria Victoria nad Charlie Hunter – The Live Sessions EP last August.
“Jacob’s Ladder” arrives in the wake of Sweetest Ache‘s first two singles “Peanut M&M’s” and “Therapist’s Armchair,” both of which find Elliott hot on the mic, poetically spilling her soul through impassioned vocal performances that glisten and gleam amongst a thrillingly emotive electro-acoustic backdrop (whereas “Peanut M&M’s” is a full band indie pop eruption, “Therapist’s Armchair” is a softly brooding lullaby comprised of just piano and vocals).
The new single sits sonically in-between its two predecessors, glowing with a radiant warmth as Elliott dwells in dreamy depths:
I climbed the ladder
That you put in front of me
Hoping you’d be there
Then clouds of angels
Turned into a crowded street
Drowning out my every
Word which I tried to say
“I wrote ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ about spiritual deconstruction and uncertainty,” Elliott tells Atwood Magazine. “It poses the question, what happens when all we know to be good begins to hurt us? How do we move beyond that, and can we ever find the good in it once again?”
“‘Jacob’s Ladder’ is all about the journey, infusing old western instrumentation and modern folk. The vocal arrangement coupled with Charlie Hunter’s acoustic and baritone guitars created a textual universe that I feel really proud of.”
The song’s chorus is an especially potent, entrancing climax:
Oh it was nice to dream again
To feel the touch of my oldest friend
Oh it was good to think of you out loud
Oh it was good of this I’m sure
Letting you in through and open door
Oh it was good to think of you out loud
She may not necessarily find the answers she’s so desperately looking for in “Jacob’s Ladder,” but there’s no denying the spiritual release and sense of renewal that this song provides to both artist and audience alike. Victoria Victoria has once again opened our hearts and minds through music, shining a light on a part of our existence that we might very well take for granted. Dreaming is mystical, and quite frankly, magical; our dreams could very well be proof that existence is non-linear, that there exist realms beyond the physical spectrum.
Now, whether this song sends you down a rabbit hole is entirely up to you. Either way, there’s a world of warmth and wonder awaiting all who venture down Victoria Victoria’s “Jacob’s Ladder.”
It was nice to dream again
Oh it was nice to see your face again
Even if I never see your face again
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Stream: “Jacob’s Ladder” – Victoria Victoria
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