With a rhythmic thrum that pulses like wings beating out of sync with gravity, Astara Black’s “Rollerbird” slips between alt-pop shimmer and a faint psychedelic haze, like Mazzy Star rewired by Cate Le Bon. It’s both soft and sharp—coated in velvet but barbed with meaning.
The imagery behind it is already striking: roller pigeons, bred to fall mid-air, spiral toward the earth in what can only be described as a gamble with instinct. That, says Whitney Cline, the voice and soul behind Astara Black, is the metaphor. One that mirrors love, life, failure, resurrection—and art itself. You hear it in the structure of the song, that almost hypnotic single note that mimics wingbeats, giving way to layered instrumentation that feels like feathers catching wind, then losing it again. The lyrics don’t scream—they whisper something truer. And it’s the kind of song that doesn’t just play in the background, it haunts the room for a while.
There’s a beautifully cinematic undertow here, thanks in part to Eric Davis of Hembree, who helped shape the production around the natural rhythm of bird murmurs. But the real heart is Whitney’s voice. There’s a clarity in it, almost startling in its calmness, that tells you she’s lived every line she sings. It’s not dramatic—it’s deliberate. Like the fall of a rollerbird. Like returning to music after years of quiet. Like choosing to fly even when you know the landing might hurt.
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Astara Black isn’t a debut so much as a rebirth. After years away from music—spent acting, living, and, in her words, “becoming a responsible adult”—Whitney Cline’s return feels deliberate and earned. Raised between Massachusetts and Maine, schooled in London and New Jersey, and creatively awakened in Peru during an Ayahuasca retreat, there’s something nomadic and restless in her story that lingers in the music. This is someone who’s learned to be comfortable in the fall—and to find the art in rising.
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