Vera Sola has announced the release of her second album, and first in five years, Peacemaker. Along with the announcement she has shared the lead single, “The Line”.
The songwriter’s debut album caused a deep impression on its release, but the wait for a follow-up has taken some length of time. Her first LP in five years, ‘Peacemaker’ is born from loss, grief, anger, and a form of radical acceptance.
Now ready to be shared with the waiting world, the process of crafting ‘Peacemaker’ allowed Vera to move through some intense emotions. “I see this record as a sort of topography of memory”, she explains, “if one were to unroll the mind, and watch as the moments that coalesce into memories rise from the map into relief. It’s a collection of stories stitched together with that particular dreamlike quality which allows for disparate spaces to converge into a single scarcely knowable vastness”. – Clash Magazine
Peacemaker follows Vera Sola’s critically acclaimed 2018 debut Shades. Created in near-total isolation, when she finally decided to release it, it was the first time Vera Sola had ever let anyone hear her sing. It’s memorable artwork found her crouched in the corner of a derelict building and like the photograph on its cover, the recording found her voice layered, shrouded in shadow. Peacemaker blows out the walls of that room and surges across the grand American landscape it inhabits. Recorded predominantly in Nashville over the fall of 2019, Vera Sola, ever the orchestrator, nonetheless opened herself up to the magic of collaboration, working alongside co-producer Kenneth Pattengale, to bring in dozens of musicians to embellish the sound. It marks a dramatic shift from the shadowy, enclosed nature of her first recordings, to a sweeping new sonic landscape and renewed focus on her remarkable voice.
“I see this record as a sort of topography of memory”, she explains, “if one were to unroll the mind, and watch as the moments that coalesce into memories rise from the map into relief. It’s a collection of stories stitched together with that particular dreamlike quality which allows for disparate spaces to converge into a single scarcely knowable vastness”.
