Lael Neale still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record Star Eaters Delight.
The album is her second for Sub Pop and reveals an expansion of her sonic collaboration with producer and accompanist Guy Blakeslee.
In April of 2020, in the wake of transformations both personal and global, Lael moved from Los Angeles back to her family’s farm in rural Virginia. Looking at the world from a distance and getting in tune with her own rhythms, she wrote and recorded steadily for two dreamlike years, driven by a need to make order out of chaos. Forged in isolation, Star Eaters Delight is a vehicle for returning, not just to civilization, but to celebration.
Lael’s previous album Acquainted with Night (recorded in 2019, and released in 2021) was “a focusing inward amidst the loud and bright Los Angeles surrounding me,” according to the artist.
While this is a record about polarities — country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, solitude vs. relationship — the deeper intention is to heal; to come to terms with our differences and put the broken pieces back together again. Lael’s affinity with the Transcendentalists has to do with her quest to hold onto sovereignty over her own mind. In a time when our devices are constantly flooding us with information, opinions and propaganda, Lael is intentional about what she takes in – hence the flip phone and the cassette recorder.
Lael claims to be a minimalist “not because I don’t like things, but because I value freedom more.”
