Aerial East

Try Harder

Image of Aerial East - Try Harder

About this item

Aerial East’s music explores the space between the conscious and unconscious mind, between what was and what will be. She dives into what she has known - adolescence, heartbreak, coming into a new social consciousness, and managing a perpetual unanchored-ness - in order to find a most surprising place to rest inside: the unknowable.

As the daughter of a military family, East spent her late childhood in Europe and teenage years in Abilene, Texas. After dropping out of community college, she moved to New York City where she’d meet a group of musicians whom she would come to befriend and collaborate with (including Okay Kaya, Kelsey Lu, Wet + more). She hopes to tell stories we don’t hear often. “I want to tell stories about people in Texas,” she says, “I want to humanize different characters.”

‘Try Harder’ is a tight yet eclectic record, both sonically and emotionally. “I didn’t want to hear any drums,” East says. “I was going through a period of high anxiety,” she explains, adding that she listened to a lot of solo-piano to calm down during moments of ungroundedness. “I wanted to make a record to be soothing in the same way [as the piano was for her].” So, much to the initial skepticism of her collaborators, East decided against adding drums to her songs. “I just wanted it to be healing and calm, something you can listen to even if the world is ending,” a feeling we can all relate to. The end result is a beautiful ode to those of us who feel like life sometimes is a little bit harder, that we don’t quite fit in, that our edges are rough – an album-length anthem for sitting in our own discomfort and groundlessness and finding a specific peace with it. 

TRACK LISTING

A1 Try Harder
A2 The Things We Build
A3 Katharine
A4 Doin Somethin
A5 I Love Dick
A6 San Angelo
B1 Blue
B2 Angry Man
B3 Ryan
B4 Jonas Said
B5 Brennen
B6 Be Leavin

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