Fall back into the pillowy clouds of Rachel Eckroth’s “You’re the Only Thing.” The song is a gauzy love song, comfortably inhabiting the neutral zone between jazz, indie pop, and soul. The soft synth textures, courtesy of producer David Garza and collaborator Sy Smith, provide a cocoon for Eckroth’s voice to emerge in a warm glow of admiration and devotion. The song is off of Eckroth’s self-titled EP, which is out now.
Eckroth thrives in the spaces between genres, supporting artists as varied as Botti, KT Tunstall, Donny McCaslin, and Rufus Wainwright as well as recording with Antelog, Emily Saliers and others. She’s also the former synth player in the house band for the Meredith Vieira Show. When It Falls, her 2018 album and solo set, was rich, varied, sophisticated, and mesmerizing. That same year, Sy Smith released Sometimes A Rose Will Grow In Concrete, a dazzling R&B set that established the artist as a singer of uncommon candor and daring. Just as Eckroth does, she erases the boundaries between jazz and soul, pop, and experimental music so completely that you’ll wonder why they were there in the first place.
“’You’re The Only Thing’ started in David Garza’s living room after a night of drinking wine,” writes Eckroth. “During COVID, downtown LA was basically quiet, but the windows were open and you could hear a few people and cars in the street. He picked up the guitar and started strumming and the vibe was just cool, so we started this song. I’ve spent almost all of the lockdown with my husband Tim and this song is just me saying that he’s the only one I’d wanna lockdown with. Life is short and if COVID never ends, we’d be happy just being on this little horse farm in Arizona together.”
Eckroth’s self-titled EP is available now on all platforms.