Louise Post knows a thing or two about what it takes to stay relevant in the music industry: For the past three decades she’s been the co-frontwoman of the celebrated act Veruca Salt whose songs like “Seether” and “Volcano Girls” are still in regular rotation on alternative rock radio. Although Veruca Salt has consistently released music with Post as the sole constant member, during the pandemic she started writing a collection of songs that felt more personal and less like the follow-up to Veruca Salt’s 2015 return-to-form, Ghost Notes.

“Out of nowhere, these songs started flowing out of me and almost appeared to be writing themselves” Post explains, adding that many of these melodies came to her during the transitive state between sleep and consciousness known as hypnagogia. “What was making itself so clear to me and just seemed so obvious was that this was my purpose: writing music, writing songs and releasing them.”

During these inspired solitary sessions, Post eventually wrote three albums worth of material and was able to edit it down to this collection of eleven songs with help from producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist, Matt Drenik (Lions, Battleme). “I’m a social creature and I love the magic of working with others. I also need to be held accountable, and I really believed in Matt and was excited about working with him as an artist and collaborator.

He had come to know my songs pretty intimately and quite simply, he believed in me,” she explains. Correspondingly, Post was very active in the recording process, playing guitar, bass and piano, while a cast of other musicians helped her fill out the sound and collectively build the sonic textures that support this expansive collection of music. “There was a lot of collaboration in the studio: Some songs we built from the ground up and for other songs, I had a very clear idea in my head…