Los Angeles singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Whitney Mower has said before that she’s always chasing “a nostalgic essence” and “a certain tone of synth” as They/Live, but a new acoustic cut proves that she doesn’t actually need synthesizers to achieve the dystopian, ethereal glow that defined her debut album, Ablation.
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Today, They/Live shares a stripped-down version of Ablation’s second single, “Dreamer,” which will appear on an expanded reissue of the album via Born Loser Records and Russia’s Other Voices.
“Perhaps an acoustic, stripped-down version of a song gives it the chance to be heard more clearly, to hear it for its meaning and melodies, and less for its production,” Mower tells American Songwriter over email. “Lyrics aren’t always the emphasis in contemporary synth-pop, but I’ve always been pretty adamant that mine come across quite clearly. Because lyrics matter to me. And the lyrics in ‘Dreamer’ matter to me. The song carries a message about The Artist finding their strength to push forward: ‘So I go in deeper than I ever have before/ here I am a dreamer but they wove me into war.’”
“I wrote ‘Dreamer’ in El Sereno, California on a little Casio keyboard about two years into the Trump administration,” Mower continues. “Overwhelmed with health issues related to Endometriosis, money struggles, and the end of a relationship, I was thinking about leaving LA for a while. I was lost, our country seemed lost, and I needed some kind of retreat. How could I continue to sustainably be an artist in this landscape and did it even matter?, I wanted to know. ‘Dreamer’ expressed my feelings of hopelessness and despair at that time, but melodically it felt (and still feels) hopeful. Despite the dystopia she’s living in, the narrator in the song still manages to connect to someone: ‘For reasons I can’t control I found a man down there / I showed him the ugly road but he was never scared.’”
The acoustic version of the track pairs Mower’s searching, pristine vocals with spindly guitar. It’s one of two acoustic cuts that will appear on Ablation’s new reissue, the second of which is a stripped-down rendition of “Circles.”
Like many musicians, Mower’s world has been reshaped by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “I lost two bartending jobs and was hit pretty hard financially at first,” she shares, “but now I’m at a restaurant a few days a week, and living off the last of unemployment, so for now I’m surviving. I’m lucky.”
With touring off the table for the foreseeable future, Mower has turned her attention to new writing and composing projects. “It doesn’t look like we’ll see the bar scene or live music scene fully returning anytime soon,” she says. “So the way I produce income for myself is going to have to take a major shift, as it will for so many people across the globe. But creatively I refuse to stop. I’m currently working on music for a short film with LA photographer/cinematography Liz Bretz. And sadly since I can’t put any energy into playing live music, I’ve begun writing a second album. I’m also working the polls in November. Please vote, everyone.”
Ablation is out now via Born Loser Records. You can order vinyl and pre-order the expanded editions here, or pre-order the expanded CD and cassette here. You can also join Mower in becoming a poll worker here.
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