Sara Rachele is at her best when she confronts difficult themes. Her 2015 song “Rebecca” is a heart-crushing recounting of having an abortion and its latent after-effects. 2020’s Scorpio Sun, the follow-up to her 2019 release Scorpio Moon, is as uncompromising in its honesty as it is uplifting in its search for beauty. “For this album,” Rachele explains, “I'm trying to strip my music back and be who I am, where I am, right now: a person who's been really run around and had to retreat from a lot of different situations, who is trying to fix things, trying to fix myself.”

In the aftermath of the Scorpio Moon production, a tightly-constructed affair with a full band and several production issues, Rachele (pronounced “ra-kelly”) found herself returning to the songs that didn’t make the cut. “I was trying to write through some personal issues that had been going on, and I also wanted to see which songs could stand up by themselves. I wanted to know which of these songs could be vulnerable and not feel like trauma porn or what have you.” This album’s title is inspired from Rachele’s realization that most of the people around her as she worked on Scorpio Moon, including her ex-boyfriend, were Scorpio sun signs.

Where Scorpio Moon was a complex, atmospheric collection of jazz and pop-influenced songs, Scorpio Sun is a complete about-face. Recorded with Rachele’s long-time collaborator Spencer Garn, this new LP is a more stripped-down affair: just Rachele’s haunting voice, hypnotic guitars, and captivating lyrics bolstered by Rachele’s recent work ethic (a low-residency MFA in poetry at New York University).

While Rachele generally keeps her poetry and lyrics separate, the pensive and hypnotic “Dead Squirrel in the Tractor Pool” is the first of her poems that she’s translated into music. Once Rachele added a chorus, she was off to the races.

Listen to the "Dead Squirrel in the Tractor Pool" song now and connect with Sara Rachele on her Tumblr.

Connect with Sara Rachele: Tumblr