Ex:Re (the cult-classic solo project from Elena Tonra of Daughter) releases her new album Save As, out now. The release comes alongside another live session video of new single ‘Am I Even Real?’ filmed at the 4AD London studio, directed by Cuan Roche.
‘Am I even Real?’ is a song that found its true version in the studio, after an improvisation session that Tonra and producer/collaborator Fabian Prynn recorded together. It began as a “really slow, really sad song”, she recalls. “Then one day we thought, ‘What would happen if we just…’ and we started playing the chorus really fast.” It stuck. That combination of long-held ideas stored in notebooks and on laptops with unfiltered first thoughts and improvisations is key to the album’s perfect mingling of liveliness and deep thoughtfulness.
The track follows previous singles ‘Sleep’, a song written alone in Paris featuring a melodic loop made from the demo’s acoustic guitar run through a vocoder and a drum machine, and ‘Radio Station’ a trippy song about an endless California road trip over a heady wall of guitars, fluttering synths and Prynn’s trudging yet persistent percussion. All singles are accompanied by artful live session videos that capture the energy with which the album was made – Elena with her trusted collaborators in the studio.
Elena Tonra didn’t intend to write a second Ex:Re album. The lead singer of Daughter released a solo record in 2018 and had only ever conceived of one record proper under that moniker. But in 2023, when she took some sketches of songs she’d had for several years into the studio with Fabian Prynn, who produced the first Ex:Re album, the pair’s musical compatibility once again took hold, and Save As was born. Save As was produced by Fabian Prynn and also features Josephine Stephenson on cello, Hinako Omori on synthesisers, Ben Reed on bass and Jethro Fox on electric guitar.
There is no grand, overarching storyline to Save As. Rather, the album is the latest in Tonra’s catalogue that expertly chronicles the gnawing minutiae of human consciousness: the over-thinking that consumes us, and the places we travel to escape. Its central theme is how we remember these moments. “My memory is not always very good,” Tonra admits. By preserving images in songs, she gives herself a means to remember. Listening to or performing them “is like travelling back in time”.
Stream / purchase Save As here.
Listen / watch ‘Am I Even Real?’ here.
