There’s not much attention given to a mother’s rite of passage. Expected to transition into their new role with ease and poise, a mother's reality is pretty messy. Alva Leigh became a mother in 2017 just three weeks after a career milestone performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London with her band, Lewis & Leigh. The Americana duo she formed with Welshman Al Lewis released their debut album Ghost to critical acclaim, after a run of shows at Glastonbury, Cambridge Folk Festival and a UK/Europe tour. Once thrust across the threshold of motherhood, however, the paradoxes began, and Alva processed the only way she knew how – songwriting.

Alva left London during the COVID pandemic with a newborn and toddler, returning to Tennessee to make a new home. Somewhere in between nap time and the nursing chair, she kept writing songs as a sort of reverse magic trick - how not to disappear into caretaking. But there was one threshold she wished she didn’t have to cross like the 20 week ultrasound appointment where she learned her third daughter would not survive birth. The paradoxes ensued; songs like “Find You In Other Places” became a hopeful lament.

Alva collaborated with Matt Ingram (Laura Marling, Florence & the Machine) for production of her new songs. The musical result is playful, explorative, dreamy, undeniably pure pop that stands in stark contrast with lyrics that are vulnerable, and piercing, yet hopeful in their observations. Love and fear. Loneliness and expectation. Loss and hope. Grief and magic. Turns out there is catharsis in the making, and Alva mines her experience into a poignant statement of not only a mother’s passage and perseverance, but the multifaceted beauty of the human condition itself.