Arrows of Athena – Daydreaming
There’s an old adage in music about how a band has their entire lives to write their debut album, and are only afforded a short burst of time that follows to craft the second. For Arrows of Athena, the opposite may be true.
The Boston electronic alt-rock duo is set to release sophomore album Daydreaming on Friday, April 3 via Bellhaven Records, an expansive and cinematic record fueled by a trio of singles, including last month’s star-gazing “Comets,” and a fiery new spotlight track titled “Room With a View.”
Recorded at the band’s Monza Studio over the course of last year, Daydreaming is the follow-up to Arrows of Athena’s 2024 debut album The Ghost Archives, which found the duo’s Jac-Lyn Gibson (vocals, visuals, and storytelling) and Scott Lerner (guitar, bass, synths, drum programming, and engineering) returning to music after several years away, coming together over the pandemic to bond over a shared personal loss and create an outlet for recent events that shaped the course of their lives.
A high-energy cascade of beats n’ treats that was selected by WBUR, Boston’s NPR, as one of the most anticipated New England albums of Spring 2026, the polychromatic Daydreaming takes a different approach. It captures the life lessons the pair have accumulated over their lives, and filtering them through a storytelling lens and Arrows of Athena’s massive sound of loud and adrenalized ‘90s-coded electronic bangers that straddle a strobe light between noisy alternative rock and glossy pop music.
“Our debut album felt more like an experiment that was on a deadline,” admits Gibson. “I had my own insecurities about getting back into songwriting and I knew Scott could feel my apprehension building with each song I wrote. Looking back, it was sink or swim for me. Getting our debut album out quickly meant we could test the waters and walk away without much risk or embarrassment. Lucky for us it gave us the confidence to really hone in on our sound musically, and is a testament to how far we have come in a short time.”
Opening up the storylines to more universal themes, Daydreaming swirls with tales of a woman’s strength – no surprise from a project named after the goddess of female empowerment – plus notions of failures and victories, love, motherhood, betrayal and the thief of time, with each of the 12 songs unfolding like their own sonic chapters, all still mixing seamlessly with Arrows of Athena’s potent cocktail of thunderous dance beats, thrashing riffs, and intimate melodic intensity
With both members balancing families, careers, relationships, and responsibilities that often have no end in sight, Daydreaming captures the essence of life in 2026 simply by its sound, balancing the heavy and the soft all while pulsating forward – and its title reflects the mental escape necessary for Gibson and Lerner to pull it all together.
“The album became more about reflections on my earlier years, my relationship with my husband, my kids and other people’s stories that I felt needed to be told,” Gibson adds. “Whereas The Ghost Archives was more about personal grief, this album became more about storytelling. Not just personal narratives, but stories from other people’s wins and losses.”
That shines through on new single and spotlight track “Room With a View,” a radiant alt-pop arena-ready cruiser with MTV Buzz Bin DNA that takes us back to the mid-’90s. It comes off not unlike that recent social media trend where Gen X and elder millennials show off just what life was like in the last great (and definable) decade.
“The idea came to me when I decided to reflect back on being a teen in the ‘90s and being a sort of street rat!” Gibson recalls. “We had zero proof, no social media to haunt us, just hanging with friends and living a life with no filters. What a time to be a kid! So I wanted the song to capture the essence of being a teen in the ‘90s and watching a video of sorts in my memory tucked away for no one to enjoy but myself.”
Elsewhere, Daydreaming’s explosive and echoing lead single “Abandoned Love,” which also opens the album, seduces the love we have for our partner through a song about connection and co-dependency, and the swirling “Just You and Me,” a surprise Valentine’s Day drop on Bandcamp, honors the feeling of living in your own world with the person you love, shielding the band and holding close the good.
“These songs are more of a nod to the happier moments that keep us moving forward through life’s obstacles,” Gibson adds. “I am just really proud of what we accomplished across this record, from track 1 (‘Abandoned Love’) to the last track (‘Tied Up in Knots’), we surprised ourselves and hope others can appreciate all the goodness this album has to offer.”
February’s ultra-sensory and star-gazing “Comets” takes a modern and glossy sound coated in blissful noise and applies it to a tale as old as time: The perseverance, and ultimate success, of a woman who was doubted by those around her, drawing inspiration from 1800s French wine and champagne pioneer Madame Clicquot. Album tracks like the dream-pop floater “Tied up in Knots,” and synth-n’-percussion-driven “You’re Not all That” show off added elements of the Arrows of Athena wall-of-sound style that have quickly crystallized into a form that both comforts and overwhelms.
“I think the sound evolves a lot as the songs take shape, there are more guitars on this album, but still plenty of synths, too,” Lerner says. “A couple of the songs are a little darker, but even those seem recognizable as an Arrows track. I’m always going to bring more of a rock edge, and Jac brings more of a pop sensibility that really works for us.”
That chemistry first formed back in the 2000s, when Gibson and Lerner played together in Boston rock band Pure Fiction. After their dissolution (but not before playing live at CBGBs in 2005, a point of pride for both), Gibson relocated to New Jersey to start a family, and Lerner carried on with Boston indie rock luminaries The Crushing Low. Members of that band would fill out Arrows of Athena on stage at their live debut for the On The Record radio showcase in Lowell back in February, where their songs came to vibrant life.
“I always did prefer playing live rather than sitting in a studio; it seems more natural for me,” Gibson says, with Lerner adding: “All true, although I like being the mad scientist, too. Playing live just has a different energy.”
While a second live show may arrive this summer, energy is in no short supply on record throughout Daydreaming. And at a time when drifting off mentally is a necessary escape to get through the day’s chaos, the idea of fantasizing about better times – and ignoring the pain in front of us – is baked deeply into our lives.
“Daydreaming seemed like the perfect album title because of the process I went through for each song idea,” Gibson reveals. “I was experiencing a major writer’s block at various times during the songwriting for this album. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself and would panic – there were other stories besides loss that I wanted to tell but didn’t know how to start.”
She adds: “I was trying to force the creative process and it just wasn’t working. As soon as I began to give myself some grace, I found the ideas would present themselves in a more organic way. Most of those ideas came to me when I wasn’t even thinking about it. The songs would unveil themselves organically, like I was in a dream-like state. Who knew?! Daydreaming was the answer.”
And like any proper daydreaming session, what flooded Gibson’s creative mind helped shape the storytelling narrative that decorates the album in playful color, channeling relatable stories and life lessons and reflections into a hazy, contemplative record that looks back as much as it does forward.
“I love what we created on that first album,” Gibson concludes. “The rawness of that production and my songwriting was exactly what that album was supposed to be at that time. These songs are more of a nod to the happier moments that keep us moving forward through life’s obstacles. When I listen to our debut album the rush of emotions all comes back to me. It felt very cathartic to create The Ghost Archives with Scott and was more of a healing journey for both of us. Now that we got through that chapter of pain, we are ready to tell a different story.”
Just close those eyes and casually drift off into the distance, and allow Arrows of Athena to soundtrack whatever comes to mind.
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