Name: Sides
Brand: Lean Year

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

WV217CD

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-09-02

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

0843563149768

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1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

WV217LP

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black

0843563149744

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1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Lean Year

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Western Vinyl

Alverson has released five records as Spokane, and four as Drunk on the label Jagjaguwar. There is a moment on <i>Sides</i>, the new album from Richmond, Virginia-based duo Lean Year, in which a hospital room floor is filled with white chrysanthemums. This imagery, based on an opiate-induced hallucination experienced by vocalist Emilie Rex’s mother as she recovered from surgery, is a perfect encapsulation of the band’s second album: dreamlike and beautiful, yet burdened with cold, stark reality. Sides is a harrowing journey through realms of grief and memory, a meditation woven into a tapestry of synth pads, woodwinds, and Rex’s instantly recognizable voice.

The duo of Rex and Rick Alverson who also works as a film director (The Mountain, Entertainment, The Comedy) originally set out to write an album about conflict, but during the writing and recording process, they were confronted with a number of personal tragedies. Alverson lost both of his parents in rapid succession, Rex’s mother received a cancer diagnosis, and the couple’s beloved family dog, Orca, died. These events transformed the album into an exploration of loss an attempt at processing the painful, complex, and private emotions that bubble to the surface when confronted with death. “We thought we’d do a concept album called Sides where we could reflect on all of the division in the world, and some in our own families, but then COVID transformed everything / everyone, and we suffered our own specific losses. The record became about loss and grief,” Rex explains. “In this way, the title Sides was still appropriate: our individual grief and collective grief, the margins of before and after, the act and feeling of during and enduring. It felt like straddling a threshold between two opposing sides the moment before conflict and the moment after it passes, life and death, the act of living and the memory of the act. Grief feels like a contention between what you knew and what you now know, and often both feel real and unreal at once.”

<i>Sides</i> produced by Alverson alongside Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings) and featuring contributions from Elliot Bergman (Nomo, Wild Belle) and Joseph Shabason (Destroyer, The War on Drugs) has a distinctly cinematic quality, perhaps due in part to Alverson’s other career.Moments of jazz, slowcore, and dirgelike R&amp;B find their way into the sorrowful, ambient suite, lulling the listener into a state of calm while the lyrics speak of ghosts, childhood, and mortality. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, Sides succeeds in mastering a balancing act between pathos and pop. Each song is indelible and haunting, with melodies that have the kind of broad appeal reminiscent of Karen Dalton, Aldous Harding, and FKA twigs.

Sides

Music GB