Sandro Bevilaqua’s Two New Spring Tracks to be “Taken with Nature”
In Conversation with Sandro Bevilaqua on The Double Release “Overture” for New England From Memory
By Calli Ferguson
illustration by Sophia Rogers
Sandro Bevilaqua has been writing his upcoming album, New England From Memory, for three years now. But as it began to come to life, he knew he wanted to intentionally hold the release of its first two tracks until springtime.
Those tracks: “Glaciers” and “One Last Hail Mary” came out today– more than two years after the release of the composer/songwriter’s debut album, Lila, and in reaction to its melancholy– opening like slow blinks of the eyes letting in new morning light. A commitment toward forward movement. A stretching of the arms into spring’s promises.
“...if you look at the songs that I've written, all of them, as journal entries– which they both are and aren't, as far as I'm concerned–” he began in explaining this choice, “the last album was filled with heartbreak and sadness. Its last track, “July”, doesn't really feel like a summer song. It does give resolution to the whole thing and acceptance, but in a very sad, lonely way… then when we come to “Glaciers” here… It's like we had the vow to move on in [“July”], and now here we are actually moving on. We reached the end of the tunnel. The ice is melted, the sun is shining.”
All that sunshine hits our desk on the first of May. It’s one of many ways Bevilaqua’s music places his listener in context, in story, and in some sense– in memory.
“Glaciers”, New England From Memory’s opening track and its companion, “One Last Hail Mary” were released in tandem on what the artists referred to as a “double”: two sister tracks introducing the project. That choice was something of a cinematic one… “I've always liked the idea of an overture,” Bevilaqua described, “And this happens not just in opera, but a lot of great rock and pop albums: You've got this one thing that sort of sets the mood, and then it segues naturally into the first real chapter.”
So “Glaciers” sets a sun-spilled tone, and “One Last Hail Mary” starts us off on the journey. But they listen almost as one. Together, they introduce dreamy layers of textures that settle you into this serene state of moving through song. And in a sense, of wondering what comes next.
That taste for creating sensory experience and story in his music is one of several ways Sandro Bevilaqua’s musical background makes itself evident in his indie projects. After nurturing a relationship with both classical music and film as a teenager, Bevilaqua became interested in film scores and started experimenting with composition. He was hooked after hearing a string piece he’d entered in a competition performed by professional musicians. It sent him on track to study Film Scoring at Berklee. “Every gesture in music has meaning,” he said of the many things he learned there, “That's what film scoring is all about: Being able to get information across to an audience without actually using words.”
For New England from Memory, specifically, the artist notes, “I was going back to the more orchestral mindset. I think that's why it took so much longer– because I had all this stuff in mind… some of it's sort of sporadic in the way that it changes textures and everything.”
Bevilaqua spent those years honing musical skills from composition to the technical elements of production. And was meanwhile surrounded by peers, engaging with and creating music from every angle. But the idea of making indie projects like New England from Memory was merely a seed slowly nurtured with the dreamy meanderings of a comfort plan. “...in the back of my mind, whenever I felt less fulfilled with what I was doing at Berklee,” Bevilaqua explained when I asked if this was a part of the plan, “there was this soothing thought that I always could have my Bon Iver moment, where I go off into the woods and make my sad little album.”
That’s not the only way Bon Iver’s influence shows up in Bevilaqua’s new project. He referenced the artist’s self-titled 2011 album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, noting, “it was like he took everything emotional with him”. Couple that with pulling from Sufjan Stevens’ textures, and you can imagine how emotionally tender and sonically pretty this new work from Sandro Bevilaqua really is.
It also sets up the project quite nicely for the ambitious intention to create music around the feeling of memory. Music can be a good tool for that. But for Bevilaqua, it also meant honing that skill for building multi-sensory emotion through sound alone. “I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of places serving as snapshots of different parts of your life,” he noted, “They represent all of these things that changed you and made you who you are. It could be a place you go to almost every day… or a spot you've never been to in your entire life. It could be halfway across the world, but you created this psychological or spiritual significance for it in your own mind, and that's equally powerful.”
It’s one of those abstract feelings we all know, but when it comes to capturing it in song (or in anything, for that matter), most of us wouldn’t know where to begin. With the first two tracks on New England from Memory, Bevilaqua identifies us in place and in memory. In the often fragmented, layered, hazy way that shows up.
photos by Lorenzo Bevilaqua
photos by Lorenzo Bevilaqua
With this knack for painting a picture in his music and a background in film scoring, it struck me as a bit surprising when the artist told me, “I've never been a huge music video kind of guy… I don't know about the whole me standing in the middle of a big field, or something, mouthing the words to my own song.” But he does find himself wishing he could make music that can be seen, smelled, and felt— experienced with all senses. So perhaps we don’t watch someone exist in this musical world from the outside, but dive into it.
“Without getting into spoilers for the rest of this project, it goes a little bit deeper... all of these are meant to be listened to in the daylight. Like right now, when the sun is out, particularly outside.
Because it's about places. It's about memories. It's about your environment.
I remember thinking a couple of years back: if only there was a way I could make music where you could also see and smell stuff at the same time.
So it’s– I think it's meant to be taken with nature.”
With “Glaciers” and “One Last Hail Mary”, Sandro Bevilaqua asks us to, in a sense, become the music video ourselves. Let the music score our own moment in the world, outside, in sunlight, feeling the ice melt…
💿 Listen to Sandro Bevilaqua’s new music where you listen
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