Shannon Lay - Past The Veil (Vinyl)

Vinyl LP

Ten songs on a single LP, and the first Shannon Lay album on All The Best, the label she started herself after three records with Sub Pop.

Rob Shelton co-wrote and produced it at his studio, Altamira Sound, in Alhambra, California. It was made a song at a time rather than in a block of sessions. Lay has said that she and Shelton "would work together when the studio was free" and "invite friends," and that every song was recorded on a different day. Different bass players appear on "Horizons," "Honest Man" and the title track; pedal steel, strings, synthesizer and piano come in across the record; and Lay herself plays guitar on two of the ten tracks.

She describes the title as "the idea of the discomfort you have to move through," and the record as "a communal offering of what the people in the studio felt that day." Erin Osmon's notes for the label draw the contrast with Lay's earlier work, which "tendered a retreat from one's worries": Past the Veil, Osmon writes, "rips it apart."

Lay played lead guitar in the Los Angeles band Feels through Feels (2016) and Post Earth (2019), leaving in January 2020, and performs in Ty Segall's Freedom Band. Her own albums are Living Water (2017) on Mare Records, August (2019) and Geist (2021) on Sub Pop, and Covers Vol. 1 (2023).

Tracklist

1. Moving
2. What Does It Mean?
3. Honest Man
4. The Calling
5. Past the Veil
6. Whom Gods Destroy
7. Horizons
8. Room for Less
9. Sky Song
10. I Need More Water

Complete the Collection of 2:

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