On Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out Paula Kelley explores her reverence for the dark edges of pop music, crafting a deeply personal song cycle informed by her career as a musician, songwriter and arranger. Channelling some of her most treasured pop-noir classics by Big Star, Colin Blunstone and Judee Sill, the songs on her first album in almost 20 years are filled with heart-wrenching melodies and layer-upon-layer of lush, kinetic instrumentation.
Despite her membership in Drop Nineteens and her career writing and arranging pop music, Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out does not retread past glories, but rather shapes the often psychodramatic tales in Blinking’s songs into a singular and personal vision of indie pop music. Here’s what she has to say about first single “Party Line”:
When the song came to me it presented nearly fully formed—a pedaling bass line, a four part vocal harmony, an expansive soundscape. Sometimes songs sound great in your head but then don’t translate well into reality. I was lucky with this one. As I was recording part upon part, it felt as though the song was writing itself. It’s a dreamy song about dreams—not the kind that come during sleep, but rather wishes, anxieties, projections—as a way to work through and reconcile an unhappy past.
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| Photo - Stephanie Senior |
Perth/Boorloo songwriter ALEIA unveils her debut EP ‘Public Humiliation’ today Thursday, November 6, a body of work that captures the bittersweet aftermath of love with rare honesty and grace. Layering delicate folk textures with dream-pop ambience, ALEIA reflects on the messiness of heartbreak and the hardening that comes from being so exposed.
It was just this May that ALEIA made her debut, introducing her unmistakable voice through a series of deeply personal singles that have quickly shown the depth of her songwriting. Her first release, ‘Had Your Fun’, arrived as a haunting, indie/alt-pop number led by the piano that peeled back the layers of post-breakup denial and self-deception. It was followed by ‘Pretty When I Cry’, a gut-wrenching ballad built on soft guitar, sparse percussion, flourishes of delicate electric guitar and layers of harmonies, capturing the desperation of loving someone who cannot meet you halfway.
Then came ‘Public Humiliation’, the title track released in October, exposing the messy and often humiliating side of modern love. Built on a ghostly guitar and layered vocals, the track unfolds like a confession, delicate yet deliberate. These songs form the opening half of the EP, leading into the devastatingly tender ‘Holy Water’ and its raw accompanying live version. Like it was recorded in an empty cathedral, the spacious arrangement features warm piano, softly bowed strings, carefully layered guitars, and a haunting choir that surrounds ALEIA in aching harmony. The choir's body percussion anchors the song’s slow build, giving the track a heartbeat as the lingering lyrics, "Holy Water, Devil's mouth, you could only spit me out", are chanted to close the EP out.
Across its five tracks, ALEIA lays bare the fragile balance between love and self-worth, confronting the humiliation that lingers beneath heartache and the grief that comes with it all. ALEIA shares: "‘Public Humiliation’ is an EP I wrote after being jaded with love. I was newly single with my frontal lobe fully developed and realising I had only experienced toxic long-term relationships, painful situationships, and a nightmarish uncommitted life of casual dating. I want people to find comfort in this album the next time they find themselves anxiously attached to a situationship who isn’t messaging them, after a breakup with a narcissistic ex, or when single life has turned sour."
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Jont - Let's Just Be Friends.
From the quiet corners of a Nova Scotia night, Jont's "Let's Just Be Friends" emerges as a tender, nocturnal meditation on love and truth – a song that drifts between dreamy romanticism and grounded self-awareness. Vulnerable and timeless, it’s a story of connection that was perhaps always destined to burn bright and fade, leaving behind the bittersweet beauty of understanding.
"Late at night, sat up in bed with my guitar, is how some of my best songs have come," Jont shares. "Maybe it was always thus for songwriters – Cohen, Dylan – the muse sitting beside them as the world sleeps. And with my cats Oscar and Buttons beside me, I can be found there too, up late, lights low, guitar in my lap, writing something that's sprung out of me without warning and demanding my attention."
"You don't have to be a genius to work out it's a love song," he continues. "And an autobiographical one at that. Sincere too in its message – or maybe not sincere in the desire to stay as just friends. Just true in what it says about what happens when you don't." What follows is a song suspended in that liminal space between longing and surrender. "Right now the world is asleep, it's just you and me counting sheep, we can't afford to miss a beat, or no-one'll know how many there have been…" Jont sings in the chorus – a lyric that captures the fleeting, dizzying joy of new connection, even as the verses quietly predict its impermanence.
"Sometimes it seems the songs know before I do how things are going to go," Jont reflects. "But we haven't learnt the lesson until we've had enough of the pain. And though over the years the pain might have seemed almost too much to bear, it has also led directly to more fruitful evenings — sat up late at night, guitar in lap, as emotions alchemise and dissolve into a subtle and radiant joy."
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The critically acclaimed Massachusetts quintet Winterpills returns with their first album in nine years. This Is How We Dance deepens their catalog of elegant chamber pop that’s “haunting…downright glorious when the harmonies start, as crisp and shining as crystal” (The Washington Post).
Consummate masters of the slow burn, Winterpills have nurtured a singular aesthetic over the course of their 20 years together: lush and often gritty instrumentation, poetic and vulnerable lyrics, celestial harmonies, and cinematic arrangements that stealthily pull you in.
Emerging from the hiatus of the pandemic, Winterpills dove hearts-first into crafting the album's 12 songs, in a string of inspired creative sessions in the band's living rooms and basements. The resulting album feels at once personal and universal, and showcases the evolution of a band still restless and exploring new ways to collaborate. Teaming up with producer Dave Chalfant––who had a production role in the band's first 2 albums––brought the new record full circle.
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