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Music

Stream Doe Paoro's Powerful New Album 'After'

It's been a long time coming but the LA-based singer's "meditation on time, and its illusions" is a svelte, atmospheric collection.

Photo by Rinny Perkins

"Nostalgia is killing us," sings Doe Paoro. Oof. So simple, yet so true. This former single is an 80s-tinged synth number that cuts straight to the chase. How come memories, even the good ones can keep us in stasis? In any case, "Nostalgia" is one of the small clutch of tracks already out in the world from Doe Paoro's forthcoming LP After, but below is the entire stream of her record, a week before its release (via ANTI-).

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It's a varied, seductive LP: "Traveling" kicks off the collection, a slowburn torch tune, that tethers together elements of both BANKS and Bat for Lashes—all thunderous drums and swelling strings, while Doe Paoro's powerful pipes take the cake. Elsewhere she boldly allows those pipes to stand unadorned, save a piano, on "Outlines." It's a tune that should find favor with fans of early Cat Power.

“The record is a meditation on time, and its illusions—the way each ending is simultaneously a beginning; its ability to speed up, drag or stand still; contract or expand a moment—and the only awareness of what it had been coming retrospectively, or After," she explains. "I worked on this album from 2012-2015 and the sense of nature and seasonality in the textures of the production is intended to reflect the seamless shifting of time. I can hear Fall Winter Summer Spring shuffling along, there and gone. "The last song on the record is the only conclusion I could commit to: none of it matters because it’s over but there is redemption in finding peace in wherever your choices have landed you now. When I was talking to BJ Burton (co-producer) about the song, I told him that I wanted it to feel like waking up in the middle of a forest and not knowing if you are alive or dead or in a dream and it doesn’t matter because it’s so beautiful that regardless, everything is going to be OK.”

Take a peep.

After is out on 9.25 via ANTI-.