Music | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
"Rachel On The Rooftops" cover by Karl Christian Krumpholz.
The song opens with slow, fuzz-kissed guitar, as the lyrics sprawl over the track, and a single, dancing flame gives way to a face. The writer and musician Aug Stone is surrounded in shadow, lip syncing along to his lyrics.
Rachel’s in my dreams again/Regrets, silent screams again, he sings. Cymbals ring out, interwoven with Rachel Love's soothing backing vocals. Rachel’s curls unfurl again/Her eyes unobscured again. The scene shifts to a woman’s face, gold and glowing in the flicker of a candle. The skyline of New Haven is waiting somewhere above, ready to reveal itself.
That is part of "Rachel on the Rooftops," a new single and video from Connecticut-based singer/songwriter and author Aug Stone that casts New Haven as one of its main characters. Inspired by a recent dream, the song is a love letter to the Elm City and to the magic of the subconscious, with a pull that has also brought the artist back to songwriting. It’s also the first in which Stone, who has been in a handful of bands like H Bird and The Soft Close-Ups, is putting his name out there simply as himself.
Stone, who may be best known for his book The Ballad of Buttery Cake Ass, dropped the single Sept. 9. It is available for streaming and download everywhere except for Spotify, including on the artist’s Bandcamp.
“I find if I get up and just grab my guitar first thing and play for even just 10 minutes, I’m happy for the rest of the day,” Stone said in a recent interview with the Arts Paper. “I care about my lyrics, and I want them to mean something.”
That’s actually part of where “Rachel on the Rooftops” comes from. Months ago, Stone had a dream that he was in a studio in Boston, and got up and left. When he walked up onto a rooftop, he saw an old friend of his named Rachel. When he awoke, he was in a rush, but still decided to try putting words down.
About 80 percent of the song came out right away, he said. A melody soon followed. When he thought about who else he wanted on the rack, the real-life artist Rachel Love, once a member of the band Dolly Mixture, sprang to mind. He’s a longtime fan, he said, and was excited for the opportunity to work with her.
“I was kind of nervous asking her if she’d sing, but I thought it would be so perfect with the song being called ‘Rachel on the Rooftops’ and her being Rachel,” he said.
In February, Stone began to enlist different musicians, in what became a wide-ranging collaboration. He reached out to Sam Carlson, the owner of Sans Serif Recording on 770 Chapel St., to provide drums and recording for the folks based in Connecticut. He connected with an old friend in Nashville, the musician Dylan Rowe, for bass guitar. Love sent vocals all the way from the U.K., which thrilled Stone when he heard them.
“It was a huge honor” to work with her, he later wrote in a release for the song.
By May, it was time to mix the music, and Stone was thinking about visual components. To the song—he credits Carlson, among others, for working with him to make it come together—he started building a video in which the Elm City would play a pivotal role. New Haven is an integral part of his story as an artist: he spent several years getting to know music through city institutions like the late, great Cutler’s Records, which no longer exist. He enlisted Connor Rog, co-founder of Kicker Pictures, to shoot the video and Olivia Marino to play the part of Rachel.
“The big thing that struck me about the making of ‘Rachel on the Rooftops,’ was the number of collaborators and how far-flung everyone was,” Carlson said in an email earlier this month, adding that he was delighted to help the vision come to life. Carlson has worked with Stone on an audiobook, and remembered seeing a few of his performances as Young Southpaw at the former State House. “Aug's collected a lot of really interesting collaborators over the years, and seems to be a welcome presence in alcoves across the world.”
“Aug's a great guy, and his ideas are never quite what one expects!” he added.
That translates to the final cut of the video. As the shot opens, the viewer sees only a dark space where a candle is lit, illuminating Stone as he sings, and then Marino, candle in hand, as she joins in. The scene jumps between the two of them, then hops to Stone in a t-shirt and long coat, extending his arms in the bright light of day as New Haven expands behind him. The wind ruffles his hair like an old friend.
That interplay between in and outside, the artist’s subconscious and the written craft, sometimes mirrors the single’s cover art with drowsy dusk lighting, a purple-pink sky and sense of calm that permeates Rachel Love’s soothing backing vocals.
For Stone, the song also marks a meaningful return to songwriting. Before writing and performing the piece, Stone thought that he was done with music, he said. He’d collaborated with a friend on a 35-song project, but “nothing came of it,” and his disappointment pushed him away from the medium. For a while, he focused his energy elsewhere, writing essays and books, and dipping a toe into audiorecording. “Rachel” pulled him back in.
It’s understandable that it did. As a finished piece, “Rachel On The Rooftops” has clear and distinct instrumentation, with backing vocals that string the lyrics and notes together. It invokes the feeling of nostalgia and contentment, as if the listener is going round and round in circles on a sonic carousel. There’s a sense, indeed, of being on the rooftops—leaving a listener isolated, maybe, but not alone.
That is, because Rachel is there with them. It’s dreamy and also delightful, the kind of song a person can stay in for multiple listens.
Claire Armstrong is a senior at Common Ground High School and a graduate of the Arts Council's 2025 Youth Arts Journalism Program.