Los Angeles based indie-pop artist Sloan Golden announced her debut EP, Long Conversations, this week. The EP will arrive September 25th.
Long Conversations chronicles an emotional and physical journey. In loose chronological order, it is leavened with the wisdom that arrives once one passes through the fire and, scars and all, sits down to write about it. Before one fears this is a work entirely about suffering, know this: there is relief here, and growth, and the saving grace of genuine friendship, often set to sweet melodies that don’t exactly sound like a horror soundtrack.
Along with the announcement is the release of Golden’s new single, “Corner of My Eye.”In it, we find her grappling with a small-town surety: searching for safety after running into someone who has hurt you in the past. Golden renders it poetic, imagining an abuser rounding the corner and seeing shredded old photographs of his face as she takes out a clear plastic trash bag.
“’Corner of My Eye’ is the aftermath of a trauma when you’re too afraid to look up from the ground in fear of the eyes you may meet,” she says. “The bridge is something I’m most proud of. I came up with it on the spot as we were recording and decided I wanted it to be a cacophony of phrases I had been confronted with over the years from men who tried to gaslight me. It builds and builds and builds until it culminates in an old recording of me yelling on the phone at the person that the song is about.”
Accompanying the release is an anxiety-ridden visual that sees Golden attempting to break free from her environment. “My junior year of college I struggled with feeling safe in my neighborhood as I lived in close proximity to someone that had really hurt me,” she says. “I felt like I always had to look over my shoulder whenever I left the house, in fear that he was somewhere nearby. This experience heavily inspired the creative for the ‘Corner of My Eye’ visualizer, with the string symbolizing a throughline of panic that I wanted to rid myself of.”
Golden mentions the new single is extrinsic, relating to external factors, while her first single, “Parking Lot,” is the opposite. In it, Golden invites listeners into her Hyundai Tucson to have a conversation, not unlike the ones she’d have with her friends after work during high school.
“Those conversations are what tethered me to reality when I was really going through it,” Golden says. “Sonically it encapsulates what a panic attack feels like, setting the five stages of grief in motion.”
A daughter of New Jersey, the singer-songwriter finds an unsung energetic link, some spiritual connective tissue, between the City of Angels and the Garden State. Allegedly the most and least glamorous places in the country, each feature a biodiverse climate largely paved over with Best Buys and Paneras with haunted parking lots, cracked sidewalks and light pollution.
The EP is sonically inspired in part by the modernism of Maggie Rogers’ production and the raw instrumentation of Daughter. The themes of Long Conversations are ancient and familiar. They are longing, betrayal, violation, fear, rage, and the strange peace that comes with acceptance.
Photo credit: Lauren Nieves Photography
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