Silver Liz – Through The Trees
Silver Liz’s latest full-length for the couple’s Extremely Pure label, III, is their most idiosyncratic to date and set for for a January 30th release.
It’s named after a painting at the Andy Warhol museum, Silver Liz — a duo consisting of Carrie and Matt Wagner — officially cemented themselves as an electric force when offered the opportunity to open a packed show for still-ascending Kero Kero Bonito in Chicago. Their albums I Can Feel the Weight and It Is Lighter Than You Think showcased their take on jangle pop, shoegaze, and dream pop that were smudged in futuristic, baroque ways.
In 2024, Wagner’s solo debut We Could Stay harkened to dance classics by The Field and Daniel Avery and earned a 7.6 from Pitchfork while yielding bookings at cutting edge clubs in Brooklyn. III is similarly futuristic, with its burbly synthesis and restless arrangements. Where prior Silver Liz efforts were jangly and familiar, these nine fuzzy tracks are steeped in fluidity and climactic motion — equally indebted to ‘90s alternative and contemporary electronics.
“Through The Trees,” the second single, started as an iPhone demo Carrie played on an unplugged electric guitar.
The couple got so used to the intimate sound, they decided to simply re-record the unplugged electric guitar for the studio version. The raw strumming is set against a lush backdrop of synths and drums soaked in reverb, creating a sense of both intimacy and cosmic expansiveness. Perpetuated by a fluid and cinematic song structure, each section feels like a cut to a different scene in a romantic drama about star-crossed lovers. The ending dissolves into a sea of modern orchestral strings that evoke Radiohead’s In Rainbows or a Jonny Greenwood film score.
Though they share an apartment, it was shaped by an individualistic process. Carrie sketched Voice Memos, which were fine-tuned together, before Matt tinkered with the ideas in Ableton. “The only rule for writing and production is that we just both have to love it,” they say. They completed vocals and guitar over two strenuous weeks in 2023, at lifelong friend Shawn Pringle’s studio in Matt’s hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The remainder of III was fleshed out in Matt and Carrie’s living room, aided by the freedom of quitting their day jobs.
III is a sincere, vulnerable relic of Matt and Carrie’s 20s. Lyrics that grapple with interpersonal disenchantment, grief, and loneliness mingle with therapeutic storytelling. “We started writing this record shortly after we relocated from Chicago to Brooklyn in May 2021,” they remember. “We had a lot of college friends from the East Coast who had been living here for a while. We spent our first year sharing a house in Bed-Stuy with two really good friends and then they moved to another city and we moved to our own place. After that, it felt like more and more of our friends were moving away from New York City while we were just getting started.” Matt and Carrie drew solace in songwriting as they navigated the transactional isolation of a competitive market.
As III finally emerges, Carrie and Matt are embarking on a fresh chapter. They recently had their first child, Amelia, and are gearing up for a return to Pittsburgh. The ongoing adaptation lends the album a sense of retrospective catharsis. “As the old idiom goes, ‘third time’s the charm’ — and on this record we really feel like we kind of achieved our eureka moment in terms of what we have always wanted one of our records to be,” the pair muse. Across III, distorted fretwork and bittersweet singing flutter like memories caught in a butterfly net.
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