If somebody asked me what keeps Maria Paroussi busy, I would say that she is «looking for songs». The sound engineers who stutter their instructions behind the booth, the songwriters who wake up and touch the piano, eating an apple, the musicians that take their receipt book with them when they leave for the studio, the record company owners who ask «why should I be interested in this?», the owners of small record stores who had CT scans this morning, the music critics, bigger than the blogosphere, who post their final stars on a sixteen year old girl’s wall, all these exist because Maria Paroussi asked – when she really needed it – for a song.

And this year when we all have become financial analysts – who knows after what superficial reading of one of the 1.000.000 dominant theories – Maria just looks at the weather, wears a shawl if needed, or a t-shirt, or gloves, or ice-skates and gets out in the garden to cross-stitch.

Her embroidery is the garment needed for this year’s selected songs (others set off to find her back in 1933 – “Stormy Weather” performed by Ivie Anderson – and others, she found them on her doorstep before they even started talking – Lanterns On The Lake’s “Ships In The Rain”) to survive the rain that is already falling. Ιndie Russians, female multi-instrumentalists, even sufi djs from San Diego fit under her embroidered quilt and once more there is room for us too, us who were not prepared for the weather.

For us, late and uncovered, Paroussi asked for the 13 tracks of “Under The Weather” –her 5th compilation. I would hurry to say «the most beautiful» of them, but afterwards I listened again to the previous four. No song is there accidentally. All come slowly over the years and create the invisible canvas of our lives. The life that is visible – the one that nobody asked for – does not matter.

Foivos Delivorias
08/12/2011