See Night Tease ‘Just Another Life’ with Unveil Atmospheric, Shoegazy Ballad “Gravity”

Los Angeles-based See Night will drop their new indie-rock album, Just Another Life, on February 28th. The shoegaze/dream pop/psych release reflects on the lives we lead and ultimately leave behind to start fresh. And like that dynamic between its contrasting themes of leaving and homecoming, the tracklist itself is an ebb and flow—from the garage-rock fuzzy guitar opener, through two piano instrumentals, to the romantic orchestral shoegaze of “Sober & High,” and finally to the lo-fi acoustic outro song. It’s a moody meditation on ever-changing relationships and life chapters. It’s a treatise on a wanderlust that was stifled during the pandemic lockdown and the driving urge to be a touring musician.

See Night is the project of guitarist and singer-songwriter Linda Sao, who tours with an incredible band (drummer Cory Aboud, guitarist Patrick Andrews, and bassist AJ Marquez) known for an explosive live show and also solo in the U.S., EU and UK. See Night has shared stages with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Widowspeak, Matthew Logan Vasquez (Delta Spirit), Lady Lamb, John Vanderslice, Rogue Wave, The Pack a.d., Sunwatchers, David Dondero and more. The 7-inch single “Eloquence” was personally handpicked by Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich and put out on his Brokers Tip Records. Sao is also an official Anderson Guitarworks artist alongside David Crosby, James Iha, Hannah Wicklund and Graham Nash.

The majority of the new songs were recorded over three days with co-producer Tres Sasser in his Tresland studio in Nashville with Joe Costa (Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Elizabeth Cook, Lyle Lovett, Sara Bareilles) engineering and mixing, with an additional session at The Bomb Shelter (Alabama Shakes) in Nashville with Jack Tellman engineering and drummer Aboud. Sasser brought in a stellar collection of musicians to realize Sao’s vision, including drummer Brad Pemberton (Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle and The Dukes), Grammy and Juno award-winning violinist Tania Elizabeth (The Avett Brothers, Mary Gauthier, The Duhks), and guitarist Chris Tench (Liam Lynch, The Sifl and Olly Show, Matthew Ryan).

Sao comments:

“Tres and Joe have become my go-to studio team of incredibly talented friends They’ve both worked on the previous See Night releases. And just like with my bandmates, I have to feel emotionally safe with the people I work with because both recording in a studio and performing live onstage are incredibly vulnerable things. I want good people to infuse good energy into what I consider personal heart songs.”

The album kicks off with the driving indie-rock “Being Good is Supposed to be Easy,” about the passing of Sao’s father. Its foreboding shoegaze instrumentation is energized by big, layered distorted guitars, a hooky melodic bassline, and propulsively dynamic drums. Everything drops out in the verse to emphasize Sao’s ethereal vocals. They have a solemn air as she lyrically tackles universal themes of reconciling with death, adult struggles with one’s parents, and the simple desire to be a good person. It’s a song of generational trauma, of timeless debts that can’t be repaid, and wanting to be the person that breaks that cycle.

“I was a solo traveler even before I played music publicly,” says Sao. “That was fate training me to be a DIY touring musician. My happy place is in the window seat on a train. Traveling is freedom, a way to seek optimism and hope because you never know who or what’s behind a door. Monotony gets me down. Touring has been my cure.”

See Night Tease “Gravity” single artwork

The mournful and atmospheric “Gravity” is a shoegazy ballad about letting go, moving on from the past while being called into the future. Its sad dreampop composition is carried forward by finger-picked electric guitar, reverb and drums with a heartbeat cadence. The bass and otherworldly guitars move in the background like a wistful fog. “The gravity of tomorrow / Pulls yesterday to sleep / But you were immovable like a chess piece,” she sings. It’s a song about the comparing mind and a painful longing that resolves with newfound clarity.

Most of the album was written during Sao’s pandemic isolation in San Francisco and were intentional homecomings to her core singer-songwriter styles. Perhaps the sense of homecoming is most embodied by her instrumental cinematic pieces “Piano No. 1 (Morning)” and “Piano No. 2 (Night),” titled to pay homage to Chopin’s “Prelude Op. 28, No. 15”—the last song she studied on piano as a teen. Both songs were improvised in the studio and turned into segues, gluing the album together. “Piano No. 1 (Morning)” has a light, veil-like feel to it, like the sun cutting through a romantic grey fog rolling in from the San Francisco Bay. While “Piano No. 2 (Night)” bookends the album with drum heartbeats and stacked violins that move like stormy waves in the witching hour.

Just Another Life is a calculated album that should be listened to as a whole. It’s intentional. It’s orchestrated. The songs connect with each other in a visceral way. Close your eyes and allow this album’s sonic representations of human emotions to wash over you—to move you with the cyclical universality of metaphorical death and rebirth.

Show Dates:

Jan. 30 – Los Angeles @ Scribble w/ Dancermancer, Blair Might (Ticket link)

Just Another Life Track Listing:

1. Being Good Is Supposed To Be Easy
2. LA Traffic
3. Just Another Life
4. Gravity
5. Piano No. 1 (Morning)
6. Sober & High
7. Piano No. 2 (Night)
8. NYC Coats

See Night ‘Just Another Life’ album artwork