“I’m on the ground today, but I won’t stay if I catch wind of you / up in your atmosphere, it’s bright and clear, valencia and blue.” So sings Asheville-based songwriter Alexa Rose on the title track of her third full-length Atmosphere, an album she’s described as the “truest thing” she’s ever made. The record was first laid down at Betty’s studio in the North Carolina woods, though the arrival and subsequent devastation of Hurricane Helene days later reconfigured Rose’s persepective on the songs. She returned to her cabin and reworked certain tracks alone, honing down the sound to the bare essentials in order to increase the immediacy and authenticity “Stripping the songs down felt truer: nothing to hide behind anymore, but believing the roots are strong enough to hold.” An atmosphere bright and clear where emotions are left to stand on their own.
The release is only days away, and the title track serves as a fitting final single. The one song which binds together all of the others, as though providing the environment in which the rest take place. “Every song on this record seems to have its long lost twin,” Alexa Rose explains:
One falls in love while the other falls out. One relaxes into an ordinary day while one grieves what is forever altered. One is settled into the memory of an old mountain homestead, and one barrels down a highway, restless and unrooted. Eventually they meet, estranged, but undeniably related. ‘Atmosphere’ is the sky above all these scenes, heavy yet weightless at the same time. When I set out to make this record, I knew I wanted it to feel like a gradient of a storm, like having the clouds move through you. My hope was that this song would serve as the beginning of that, a shift in the air pressure, a few pleasurable drops of rain while the sun still generously warms your shoulders.
Atmosphere will be released on the 31st October and you can pre-order it now from the Alexa Rose website.
