As we described in a preview last month, the latest album of Queens-based musician Alexia Avina began with a borrowed guitar in a small German town on the floor of a friend’s room. These early ideas developed into songs which would eventually stitch together into A Little Older, out now via Lost Map Records. This slow, natural development feels intrinsic to the sound itself. A collection of songs which came into being across a span of years, encompassing a variety of periods and locations yet linked by a continuing line of questioning. “What does it mean to feel small, to feel nothing, to feel everything?” as the album notes ask. “To skirt around the edge of true vulnerability unknowingly and yet somehow so consistently?”
A Little Older feels less like an answer than an extended contemplation of the question. A period of time spent sitting with it, exploring its various depths and contours, even as the potential answer changes or begins to feel nothing like an answer at all. “Am I alright or almost there?” asks patient opener ‘Step in Line’. “All that I am, all that I’m not / Am I too bright, or almost there?” This searching tone is indicative of a record in which doubts and convictions intertwine, rising and fading at any given moment. One, as the title suggests, too wise to expect a single epiphany to solve everything. “I’m not hoping for a saviour,” as ‘Forgotten Angle’ puts it. “I’m only sifting through what’s given / An earthly bind or something bitter.”
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In this manner, the album should be viewed as a space in which Avina works through this process, rather than the process itself. Songs like the slow dawning ‘I Am Opening’ and reflective ‘Way Things Grow’ clock in at well over seven minutes apiece, long, unhurried tracks which invite the listener to sit still and take part. Free them from the need to do anything else.
This mindful style is present in other ways too. Though possessing an edge and far more succinct, songs like ‘Human’, ‘Poison’ and the title track offer awareness in a different manner. A consciousness of feelings and desires, an acknowledgement of needs and wants. And also a recognition of shortcomings and regrets so that the questioning might continue despite misgivings within any specific time. “How can I learn the way to show / All that matters when I’ve barely grown,” as closer ‘How Can I learn’ puts it. “I’m better than this but I’m battered / Embarrassed by something I missed in the moment.”
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A Little Older is out now via Lost Map Records and you can get it from the Alexia Avina Bandcamp page.
