Indie folk-rock artist Byland has returned to Seattle after her East Coast tour. Frontman Alie Byland does the lead vocals, guitar, and piano with the support of her husband, Jake, who co-writes but does not play instruments or perform. Heavy waves of bass overlaid by Alie’s ethereal, mournful vocals and clever hooks come together to create their characteristic dark and intense sound. Themes like reckoning with the past, religious trauma, complicated parental relationships, and anxiously adulting spread throughout the tracks. Byland met with the Mast to discuss her most recent album, the tour, and what’s next.
Raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Byland fortified a connection between music and emotion beginning in her early childhood piano lessons. “I was sitting at a grand piano… my feet couldn’t even touch the ground yet,” she reminisced, “[my piano teacher] asked me, ‘Alie, how are you feeling right now? Can you identify one emotion?’ And then, I was like, ‘Nervous!’ And so she said, ‘Why don’t you find one note on the piano that can express that emotion? And now find another note on the piano and let’s write a story.’”
Much of Byland’s music is ultimately about grief—her first album was about her father and childhood in Albuquerque. Her next two albums spiral through motifs about the loss of faith, identity, and relationships. Heavy for a While, Byland’s most recent album, celebrates the human experience of releasing pain. “There are so many apologies that people will never get in their life that they deserve to get,” Byland voices about the title track “And that song was me… realizing that I might not get an apology… and how do I mourn that?” Grief is a process that ultimately ends with moving forward, releasing it.
The Heavy for a While album art features Alie Byland, first posed in a hunched position on the front and then on the back of the album, in an open and lighthearted pose, dancing. She affirms the intentional, artful poses, “fully embodying the grief and pain that I’ve experienced, and then releasing it.” The album as a whole is unrepressed and accepting of human emotion.
She continues to process her feelings through music, saying that it gives her a “container” to store the painful past. “Music, I can say, is the one constant thing in my whole life… It’s just been a best friend to me for so much of my life.”
Between the last album and the next—which she says she is working on—she has been enjoying collaborating with other artists during her tour. This includes working with the director Dark Details for her “Two Circles” music video. She talks warmly of the experience, saying he took an impossible situation and made it beautiful. His unique creative process is distinctive in that instead of the artist pitching their idea for the scenes to him, he listens to their discography and picks a song that evokes strong imagery for him—then creates a concept and pitches it to the artist. Byland shared how much she enjoyed the pressure this took off her because she’s more comfortable with creating music than visual artistry. Working with another artist in this way and combining their different skill sets is what Byland has been enjoying the most across the tour.
For a new listener, good songs to start with are Lean In, Two Circles, Temporary Everything, and Monstera from Heavy For a While. From her second album Gray, she often performs Passed Me By, I’m Sorry, Mother, and Believe.