Wilby – Body
Wilby, the indie-rock project of songwriter and artist Maria Crawford, today releases the final single “Body” ahead of her debut album Center of Affection. Due out Friday, October 10 via Hit The North Records.
The record features previous singles “Pleaser”, “Spin”, “Experiments”, “Center of Affection” and “Care.”
Accompanied by a music video shot by Jacqueline Justice, “Body” is a softly strummed indie rock slow burn with an intense and fuzzed out bridge, and features a choral community of background vocals. Born from a journal entry Crawford made after a conversation with a friend, she lifted a phrase she wrote directly from the page – the body always knows.
“A friend and I were kind of trauma dumping and unpacking abuse and the toll it’s taken on us,” she shares. “I was coming out of a depressive episode and gaining appreciation for why my depression may exist in the first place. From this understanding, I had a bit of a breakthrough with myself in self trust and compassion. At the time, I was also reading The Body Keeps the Score and was learning about people with complex trauma who are particularly dissociated and don’t always benefit from traditional talk therapy. When it came to writing the bridge, I liked the idea of listing off ways to combat disassociation and reconnect to myself. The gang vocals on this part I find particularly special, because there is so much community found and needed in healing and trauma work.”
Wilby’s Center of Affection began as a creative practice, a result of morning pages that unfurled like stream of consciousness diary entries. During previous efforts, when the artist born Maria Crawford would write to prompts, enter the nebulous “album mode,” or search for a theme to spur her creative practice, everything felt forced. It was only in letting go, in a decision to let her strongest ideals bubble from the roots of her subconscious to the top of her mind, that she was able to write her bravest, most beautiful, and strongest effort to date.
“When I had previously tried to write records with a concept or just a clear prompt, I would end up obfuscating my ideas,” she explains. “It wasn’t until I debunked that for myself that I was able to break through and write the songs I wanted to.” The songs flowed very naturally from the routine sparked by her morning pages, where she would jot down ideas uninhibited by direction, feasibility, or vulnerability. “Songs would just flow from that practice, which was very inspiring.”
Despite the creative wellspring from which these songs emerged, there’s a precision and clarity to Wilby’s songwriting that is fully-formed on Center of Affection. She’s been one of Nashville’s most exciting indie artists since graduating from the city’s Belmont College, but on her debut LP, that promise is fulfilled; there’s an intoxicating splendor to this album, rich and filling both lyrically and sonically.
On projects like 2021’s EP Translucent Beauty and 2023’s EP happiest woman, desires and wants are amplified, projected onto center stage, and ruminated over. On Center of Affection, these urges are still circling, but Crawford is more interested in why they emerged than satisfying them.
“While writing this record, I was trying to get in touch with myself,” she explains. “I realized I was pretty disconnected from my childhood as well as my current and present self. I had to understand the ‘why’ that led me to be so disconnected and then understand and have compassion for myself.”
Friday, October 24 – The Blue Room, Nashville, TN
Friday, November 14 – Permanent Records, Los Angeles, CA
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