We last featured Denver-based Allison Lorenzen back in January, when we wrote about ‘VALE‘, her debut solo single. The song saw Lorenzen move past her work with darkwave band School Dance, becoming what we described as “a shadow space of glisten and reverb […] as ominous as it is alluring,” which ultimately ends up “daring the listener to peer over the edge into the dark depths beyond.”
Now Allison Lorenzen has returned with a second song, ‘Be a Fortress’, along with the news that it will join ‘VALE’ on a full-length record out via Whited Sepulchre Records later this year. Emerging from the liminal space between conclusions and new beginnings, the track is a break-up song in the strict definition of the style. The half-paced twirl and textured washes of the sound, the bittersweet intimacy of the delivery. The opening lines rooted in a kind of romantic melancholy. “This is the last time / so smile and walk away.”
But ‘Be a Fortress’ subverts the classic break-up aesthetic by changing the direction of address, altering the entire mood and coming to form a counterpoint to the darkness of ‘VALE’. Because the track is not an outward address to the now absent other, but rather an interior (re)commitment to the deep rooted convictions driving the whole situation. A song about “saying ‘no thank you’ to that which doesn’t serve me,” Lorenzen explains, “and to situations/people that aren’t actually a fit, and to stay connected with the deeper parts of myself where my truth and creativity reside.”
Written in the aftermath of both a romantic relationship and the School Dance project, ‘Be a Fortress’ steps beyond the minutiae of circumstance to present a mood more universal. One as applicable to one end as any other. The process of trusting oneself in order to live a life as truthful as any life might be.
‘Be a Fortress’ is out now and available from the Allison Lorenzen Bandcamp page. Be sure to stay tuned to Whited Sepulchre Records for more info on the album.
Photo by Kyle Johnson