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Everett-based Alie Byland’s new album, Heavy for a While, was a long time coming, but thematically and lyrically it primarily culls from a short and emotionally intense period. The songs were written with her husband, Jake, during a personally significant sojourn in New Mexico, where the pair and their dogs holed up in a house following her father’s passing not long before the onset of lockdown. (Byland grew up in Albuquerque, where her dad was a pastor and where her family lived in a commune comprising upward of 20 other people; she left the area in 2010 to go to school in Seattle.) The foundations for the tracks that would eventually appear on Heavy for a While came, as Byland puts it, in stream-of-consciousness bursts, providing some catharsis amid familial conflict and the summer of 2020’s politically charged atmosphere. 

After a couple of years of preproduction, producer and engineer Nathan Yaccino — who also worked with Byland on her last album, Gray — encouraged Byland to refine the songs into studio-readiness. Work officially started on Heavy for a While in Seattle in 2022 with a close-knit crop of collaborators Byland was assiduous about properly thanking during our interview. (They comprised, in addition to Yaccino, guitarist Jessica Dobson; pedal steel guitarist and vocalist Skyler Mehal; multi-instrumentalist and percussionist Jonny Gundersen; vocalist Meagan Grandall; engineer Peter Lyman; and Abby Gundersen, who provided strings and assisted with arrangement.) 

Read the full feature on 425.