Arielle Kasnetz has found her voice, and ‘We Swallowed The Sky’ is the fullest expression of it yet. The sophomore album from her LA-based orchestral indie rock and chamber-pop project Beatrix is out now via Nice Life, a striking, off-kilter collection that moves from hushed piano numbers to loud full-band blasts with the confidence of a songwriter who has stopped telling anyone else’s story.
New single “Class Reunion” arrives alongside an official video that feels like Twin Peaks meets The Office, set in a sterile community center. The track showcases Kasnetz at her storytelling best, painting a precise, novelistic picture of 2 exes running into each other after 10 years. He sips a gin and tonic in the corner, working up the nerve to say hello. The conversation is brief and awkward. He fumbles, feels his chance slipping, starts to have a panic attack. Everyone laughing in slow motion. Then he wakes up, and she’s gone. It was a nightmare. But one thing is true: no one loves him like she did.
That kind of narrative specificity runs through the entire album. ‘We Swallowed The Sky’ follows a ghost, the ghost of a long-gone relationship allowed to haunt its former love, embodied musically by a pedal steel that weaves between past, present, and future across the record. Where Kasnetz has often felt misunderstood, this is the most fully herself she has ever sounded on record.
The musicians assembled around her are extraordinary. Co-produced by Philip Etherington and Ehren Ebbage, the album features Harrison Whitford of Phoebe Bridgers’ band and Ryan Lerman, known for his work with John Legend and Vulfpeck, on guitars; Sean Hurley, who has played with John Mayer, on bass; Rob Humphries of Kacey Musgraves’ band on drums; Zac Rae, known for Death Cab For Cutie and Fiona Apple, on piano; Greg Leisz, the celebrated pedal steel player whose credits include Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell; CJ Camerieri, known for Paul Simon and Bon Iver, on horns; Jesse Chandler of Midlake on woodwinds; and Rob Moose, who has arranged strings for Sufjan Stevens, Taylor Swift, and Jay-Z.
It’s a production team that matches the ambition of the songs completely, and ‘We Swallowed The Sky’ is the result: moving, raw, perfectly crafted, and unmistakably Beatrix.