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There is a moment on Sides, the new album from Richmond, Virginia-based duo LeanYear, in which a hospital room floor is filled with white chrysanthemums. This imagery,based on an opiate-induced hallucination experienced by vocalist Emilie Rex's motheras she recovered from surgery, is a perfect encapsulation of the band's second album dreamlike and beautiful, yet burdened with cold, stark reality. Sides is a harrowingjourney through realms of grief and memory, a meditation woven into a tapestry of synthpads, woodwinds, and Rex's instantly recognizable voice. The duo of Rex and Rick Alverson-who also works as a film director (The Mountain,Entertainment, The Comedy)-originally set out to write an album about conflict, butduring the writing and recording process, they were confronted with a number ofpersonal tragedies. Alverson lost both of his parents in rapid succession, Rex's motherreceived a cancer diagnosis, and the couple's beloved family dog, Orca, died. Theseevents transformed the album into an exploration of loss-an attempt at processing thepainful, complex, and private emotions that bubble to the surface when confronted withdeath. InchWe thought we'd do a concept album called Sides where we could reflect on allof the division in the world, and some in our own families, but then COVID transformedeverything/everyone, and we suffered our own specific losses. The record becameabout loss and grief,Inch Rex explains. InchIn this way, the title Sides was still appropriate ourindividual grief and collective grief, the margins of before and after, the act and feelingof during and enduring. It felt like straddling a threshold between two opposingsides-the moment before conflict and the moment after it passes, life and death, the actof living and the memory of the act. Grief feels like a contention between what you knewand what you now know, and often both feel real and u
