PREMIERE Shaylee, "The Dream"

Elle Archer amid a technicolor cavalcade of lights with the guitar used in “The Dream”; press photo appears courtesy of the artist.

The delicate to nearly unsustainable tightrope balance between the reconciliation between wants and needs is almost never congruent. Anything and everything can feel inaccessible, sustenance to survive costs a pretty penny, basic necessities demand premium prices, a working class with little to zero means of owning a home, an economy where everything can feel inaccessible, and nevertheless the dream persists.

Despite all the odds we chase these lofty goals that have undergone countless revisions since the inception of our respective states of early cognition. The chase runs on and on, we discover ourselves, our communities, the people that mean the world to us, and then as life has it those people inevitable leave the material realm. Acceptance of life’s unforgiving cycles is an ongoing process reserved for the industries of therapy and the like, making peace with the arrivals and departures of those who exit with an indelible mark while juggling the journey of discovery with the means for the fuel that keeps the engines of our drive burning and turning.

Launching her A Song a Week series with #1 titled “The Dream” — Portland artist Elle Archer of Shaylee offers the following prelude:

“Chasing music as a passion, a career, a life, it can all be really hard sometimes, especially when your dreams become cost-prohibitive to your survival. I wrote "The Dream" about all the angst I feel between the life I want for myself and the life I'm living at the moment. This was also the first song I wrote and recorded since moving out of my last house, and saying goodbye to my home studio in the process, thus the return to lo-fi bedroom pop.”

"The Dream" is in part a tribute to a lost mentor, and a dedication to the indefatigable strength to persevere against all odds. Elle's minimalist performance has the lonely chorded bedroom pop cadence that pulls off the feeling of a grand operatic finale that serves as the springboard for a thousand new beginnings. The sparse strums, accompanying keys, and skipping percussive delivers an unassuming heroic cry from the depths of the heart. Archer’s spirited song strums with a painful vulnerability, a quest to conquer the world, the perils of isolation, an evocative desire to connect with others in newfound ways with music that mesmerizes in ways of the psychic and sublime.

Elle live on stage in the neon glow; photographed courtesy of KC Jonze.

Elle Archer wears passions and doubts on her sleeve with an unfettered and unrestrained instinct degree of unlimited aspiration(s). “The Dream” is a song of mourning, reconfiguring and regrouping the self and notion of an artist who is embarking upon a brand new important chapter in her life. The emotive tinged chords plunk at the core of the soul, as Elle’s voice rings forth like a down but not yet out antihero exhaling the amplifications of a new inspirational era from the bowels of a burnt out basement. Elle delivers a song about recovering from the immense effects and impact of grief, ratifying the almost inconceivable concept of loss with the determination and the principle will to carry on into something wild, incredible, beautiful, dangerous, exciting, breathtaking, and new — unlike anything else you have possibly ever known before.

Shaylee’s Elle ARcher delivers the “The Dream” that skates the bordering lines of the impossible and possigle; single cover courtesy of Alana Storm.

Elle Archer shared further candid reflections on the lights and kindred spirits that guided and helped inspire the new single:

“The Dream” is about the same dream I think most musicians have — to be recognized, to be heard, and to be seen by lots of people. Dreaming the dream is easy, but keeping the dream alive is undeniably difficult. Every time I’ve achieved one of those dreams — like getting signed to Kill Rock Stars — I just felt the same after, and found a new thing to want. Really the song is about the ennui of the entertainer, the pull and strain of dreaming big while recording songs on your iPhone in an untreated bedroom.

Dare to dream — Elle Archer of Shaylee; photographed by KC Jonze.

This song is dedicated to the memory of Seth Loeser, my friend and manager who always believed in me and was always bumping my shit in his car. arguably he believed in the dream more than I ever have.

Shaylee’s “The Dream” is out now.