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tuckiozi · 11 months

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I am going to talk about The Big Freeze by Laura Stevenson

(fuck it I'm posting this here too)

There is no other musical artist that means as much to me as Laura Stevenson does. This wasn't always the case, and my way of arriving there was real odd and roundabout in retrospect but I figure most things are in the end. In any case, there is no part of Laura Stevensons work that I do not unreservedly love. Everything she does seems to feel so uniquely and honestly itself, distinct in identity and yet recognizably the creations of the same artist. The honesty, or feeling of it, is a central part of that, and there are definitely some recurring characteristics of Laura's songwriting, but all in all every piece feels profoundly Itself.

The Big Freeze is my favorite album of all time. I think it is a singular accomplishment musically and belongs in the annals of history and it doesn't bring me great joy exactly that it really hasn't gotten much attention. I struggle with the concept of things being "deserved" in a lot of ways, yet here I feel it to the smallest roots of my heart that this album deserved more.

The Big Freeze feels like a miracle. Struggling to find a studio to record it in, some coincidences let to a producer she knew from a previous album having just shuttered his old studio and so having a bunch of equipment in storage still. Laura's mom's house was available as a space, and so they moved the equipment and recorded it there, in an old loud house. (Source: https://atwoodmagazine.com/lsbf-laura-stevenson-interview-big-freeze/). The fact that it's recorded in such an emotionally charged is, I think, an integral part of the fabric of this record. You wouldn't necessarily be able to tell, because this record sounds, incredible, but there is an emotional resonance to every piece of that album that I wonder if wouldn't have been quite there otherwise. (In the interview cited above Laura tells how she had to turn off the radiators at one point because you could hear them in the background of one song.) From these conditions emerged a genuine wonder and an absolute all-time album. This belongs on any list of top albums of all time. It is a triumph.

This album is also thematically and emotionally heavy. I sometimes think it might not be the easiest listening experience, because the songs flow so seamlessly together and they all carry such a weight it feels imposing. Treating themes of self-harm and self-worth and other equally raw matters in incredibly honest and powerful ways (See "Dermatillomania" for a potent demonstration) makes it not the easiest album to take a casual listen of. It's vulnerable, it's honest, it is simply itself, and this too reflects in the songwriting.

No Laura Stevenson album sounds the same. Sit Resists does not sound like A Record, Wheel does not sound like Cocksure. Still, The Big Freeze somehow stands out even more. There are traces of it earlier, in tracks like "Finish Piece" from Sit Resist and "Every Tense" from wheel, but The Big Freeze carries a sonic identity unlike anything else she's done before or since. Stripped back and unornamented compared to her previous efforts, the emotional core of the songs speak even stronger. (Shoutouts to the incredible and indispensable cello work throughout.)

I could waffle on for hours with thoughts on the history and feel of this album. However, I want to talk about the songs. I want to talk about why this album matters to me.

Track 1. Lay Back, Arms Out.

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This track is transcendental. Goddamn luminous. There is a memory I have of sitting in a dark parking lot in the winter of 2020, seeing the starlit night sky above me, listening to this track. The opening seconds of this track to me feels like a starlit sky first blurred and indistinct, seeing only a small section of it, and then the vision unfolding to a clear sea of lights in crisp winter air. The opening second of this song haunts me in the best way anything could. The moment Laura's voice enters is absolutely spinechilling. This song is a potent showcase of one of my favorite things Laura does, which is writing songs that don't really obey traditional structure. There is no discernible chorus, no verse. I don't think any bit of repeats at all. It is an eye-opening, stunning piece of musical majesty that weaves its way through a tapestry of strange metaphors that feel obtuse yet instantly resonant.

I'm a broken record Come wriggle out from underneath me Tied around the middle Not incorrupt and rotting out When you lift the lid I will be liquid All swimming in my skin

This song is catharsis under a clear winter sky to me. A truth of my heart holds this song to be perfect. In the winter of 2020 I was in a real bad spot. I had just finished my masters degree with a barely passing grade, after years of work and fighting with the university about various parts of the work on it with ruinous effects on my mental health. I only got a passing grade after first getting it failed after a six month wait for the grading of it, having been given solid signals it would pass and a date for the graduation ceremony, only to last minute have it pulled and being told they needed to find a new person to grade it because someone had to pull out. I was living at home with my parents, trying desperately to find a job with my grades and niche field of work in the middle of a global pandemic. I had just had my most important friendship at the time collapse, damaging several other friendships as collateral damage. I was working a taxing physical job often long hours into the night, and if not that with a rising time of 5am in the morning. My selfworth was at rock bottom. But "Lay Back, Arms Out" found me in that parking lot. This album felt like a lifeline.

Track 2. Value Inn

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I used to avoid this song in relistens. Not because I think it's bad, far from it, but because it feels so bleak. A Frank account of self-harm in a motel room, the pit of this song scares me. I've never done any physical self-harm, but I still felt afraid of this song for a good while. I don't anymore, and I appreciate it better now. The lyrics sketch vivid imagery, and the roar of the guitars transform the song into a very potent beast. Scary and bleak, it brushes up against feeling hopeless. But it doesn't. The abyss is fleeting.

And the waves crash down in the waterpark When the stakes are low there’s not much to control So let it heal with the fibers of my clothes Until I’m colorful, until I’m just so

Track 3. Living Room, NY

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Longing is one of the closest-to-universal human emotions, I reckon. Be it longing for someone you miss, longing to have someone to be with at all, longing for a specific place, longing to find the place that is the one you will miss in the future, longing is persistent in the hearts of most.

That's what this songs speaks to for me. A longing for a person and place that feels like home. With whom and where you belong. If any song is the "breakout hit" of the album it seems to be this one, at least if SEO and view numbers are to be believed. In any case, in the time where I felt the most alone and abandoned I've ever done, there was something nice about this song and it's warm longing. The dream of being wanted and wanting to be was nice. There's a strange warmth to the slightly airy vocals and strings here. This song feels nice. Like a distant fireplace you will arrive at in not too long.

So I’ll fold the world to be there tonight 'Cause I want to fall asleep on your time

Track 4. Dermatillomania

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This acid flush of shame Can only be man-made Its ugly roses bloom and wither when I look away

Hoo boy. Where to start on this one. Following on in a similar tradition from The Healthy One from Sit Resist, Dermatillomania is a nefariously catchy banger about some real dark subject matter. The hint is in the title. This song does not fuck around for even a minute. There is an explosive power in every word of it, diving head first into the titular disorder and the experience of it. The combination of intensely catchy and lyrics pulling no punches makes this one a fucking standout. There's bits of this song that feels like a confrontation with something toxic, like things bottled up being released; a "fuck you, I will become more than you". And I personally, I think, draw power from that.

I don't in all honesty feel fully qualified to speak on this song. For it's release, Laura herself wrote an essay on it. You should read that essay: https://www.talkhouse.com/on-dermatillomania/.

Track 5. Hum.

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If being hit with a crossbolt could ever be tender, it would feel much like this song. This is my second favorite track on this album, beaten only by the opener. It's beautiful in it's very uncomplicated instrumentation, tailored to highlight the voice and the lyrics. Every note hits exactly where it should.

No lyric in this doesn't intensely hit some person experience of mine; something someone else has said or something I've felt about myself. This song feels to me like it rips my heart out of my chest lovingly, cradling it and exposing its many vulnerabilities and weaknesses before patching it up a little and putting it back in. For someone with wobbly self-esteem and strongly shifting feelings if self-worth, lines like You are only the burdens you set in your mind hit with the weight of a cast-iron sledgehammer. However, this song hits another part of me strongly too: the part of me that is afraid of being seen as a thing to be fixed and of becoming someone's emotional pet project. The part of me that is afraid of being too much emotional labour when I'm not magically fixed. There is a specific personal experience behind that, and this is fear that I'd always on the back of my mind. I have no answers to it, I just have to hope to not wear out my welcome. Being a person is terrifying.

Track 6. Rattle at Will.

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I don't have a clear view of this one, thematically. I adore it, musically. The way it shifts and soars, Laura once again using her affinity for layered vocal to tremendous effect. At one point in this song her voice feels like it's hovering just into the stratosphere. It's breathtaking, carried by an incredible fading out of the other instrumentation. (Another technique Laura has used to great effect before in I See Dark, for instance)

This song feels like conflict to me. Confrontation, grinning and bearing it. Mistreatment and almost betrayal. Like I mentioned, my view on this one hasn't crystallized.

Needn't be careful with me love I'd say rattle at will, I've been drinking my milk And like trembling leaves right before the big freeze I was with you

Track 7. Hawks

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This to me is a song of homesickness. It has the feeling of thinking back on memories of more carefree times with a dear friend, from the point of view of a time that is far too full of cares and worries.

This song is even sparser maybe in instrumentation than even Hum, but once again everything is used to great effect. Mostly carried by Laura's voice and some bass and guitar stings, the strings step in perfectly where making something feel just a bit more aching is needed.

Can we go back to the minute we'd skirt through the rain? Hanging, halting, suspended like hawks under planes Can we say it's unending and I'll say the same? Remind me when my mind, it starts to go

This song, then, feels like reaching out to friends from that memory, a reminder of unbroken bonds. And that's the homesickness to me. I live now in a small place. Even when I lived in a big city I struggled to find lasting friends. I always have, and I think possibly always will. Many of my friends as such from university or that I used to know from my hometown I no longer talk to, and lost touch with many years ago.

I've known my best friend since year 11 of schooling, where we got seated together in English class and became friends immediately. Since then, we have had times of less and more contact, we have lived most of this friendship in completely different places. We have taken very different life paths and are quite different in many ways. Yet, when I go home on holidays and vacations and we get to hang out, it's like we never stopped talking. It's a trust that remains regardless of time spent apart. To me, Hawks speaks to that. Of summers remembering and forging memories. Of friendships that hold.

Track 8. Big Deep

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This, in an odd way, carries a feeling of affirmation; of finding yourself and sticking to it resolutely. That might be a pretty surface read of the lyrics, perhaps, but that's where it hits. As someone who tries to stick to being honest to myself, maybe sometime even for the worse, it speaks to that part of me.

There is a wonderful live performance of this they did on Audiotree, that does this very nice plucked cello in place of the main guitar line in spots and it is really satisfying to my brain. https://youtu.be/YjzMvifwZqQ

Mistake, mistake these terrible movements you make You wrapped your heels ’round all the chairs And you made me forget what I want, why I'm here And you made yourself loud and you made yourself clear

I think this song is phenomenally well paced out musically. There is drive to the backing melody, like a river gently pulling, and once again every bit comes together to highlight and accentuate Laura's incredible voice. It all manages to give every note the exact right emotional value and impact, and it is a wonder when it slides into its quiet bit, and then resolves into a finale. The word "transcendental" seems fitting.

(I want to include another live performance of this here cause I think it's really really worth listening to) https://youtu.be/B4-cx0knd6M

Track 9. Low Slow.

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This is the vocal performance of century. Every single piece of the band is once again on point and the melody hits ideally, but the vocal run Laura goes on in this song is fucking unbelievable. I adore this and honestly it might rate the same as Hum. It is a showstopper. It is stunning.

But I'm already poison-leaden Line with finery the wire you walk The wire you walk

I see in this one thematically some of the same things I see in Big Deep. A commitment to the ones self and being that, even in the face of adversity or hostility.

Track 10. Perfect.

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And so we come to the close. This song has a summer feel to me. The feel of sitting outside strumming nostalgic chords. There is such a profound beauty to this song; we emerge from all this darkness and tumult and heaviness to a song that kind of says that things will be alright. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. This song is calm and steady and reminiscing. It feels like home. It feels like rest. It's a perfect end to the album.

Don't you let your light filter in, I'll be alright By myself tonight

In closing

So that's it. Some thousands words on my favourite album of all time. Mostly unedited and stream of consciousness, and I'm sure I could say much much more, but I needed to say this now. It's not great writing, but I wanted it said. Please listen to this album. Please tell me how you feel about it.

The Big Freeze is available to purchase on Bandcamp, and likely available on your streaming service of choice. You can also go to laurastevenson.net.

Listen to Laura Stevenson.

#laura stevenson #the big freeze #Youtube

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