ALICIA BLUE Debuts Daring New EP ‘Inner Child Work Pt. 2’ Out Now!
“Alicia Blue captures the freeing euphoria of therapy on Inner Child Work Part 2, thinking big to finish her Nashville debut (Inner Child Work Part 1). Through insightful indie folk and a delicate pop sparkle, Blue examines coming of age in a faraway city, with a little help from The Civil Wars’ John Paul White.” -Nashville Lifestyles
“Alicia’s music encourages each emotion to be felt, embraced, and used as a tool to heal, much like her own narrative accomplishes through songwriting. With emotional purging and vivid accounts that feel like a listener’s own therapy, Alicia’s sentiments are echoed through the course of the EP, percolating until a final resolve.” -Music Existence
“For Blue, who released her debut ‘Bravebird‘ in 2020 and recently covered Jane’s Addiction’s 1987 classic ‘Janes Says”’—and even got big praise from the band’s frontman Perry Farrell for her rendition — her work has just begun. Kicking off from her very first singles, the heart-shattering country crooners ‘Magma’ and ‘Incognito’ through deeper self-revelations and evaluations on her 2022 EP, ‘Inner Child Work, Pt. 1‘, and recent singles ‘Young,’ ‘Best Hands’ and ‘I Want It Faster,’ this is Alicia Blue’s moment in time.” – American Songwriter, ’16 Artists to Watch in 2023′
“…listening to her songs feels like being invited into her intimate diary, a world full of dreams and secrets.” – Atwood Magazine
“Her new gorgeously lush EP Inner Child Work Part 1 wields the punch of Lissie, Sharon Etten and Angel Olsen with a sharper indie edge. She wades through dark indie creeks with her song ‘Saline Waters,’ which bottles the melancholy of early Tears for Fears with the sexy noir of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game.’ She gets really poppy and melodic too on ‘DTMTS (Don’t Tell Me To Smile)’ which sticks like a pickaxe to the skull. Having cowriting partners in Lincoln Parish of Cage the Elephant and John Paul White of Civil Wars doesn’t hurt either.” – PopWrapped
INDIE FOLK ARTIST
ALICIA BLUE
EMBRACES THE CHILD WITHIN
ON DARING NEW EP INNER CHILD WORK PT. 2
OUT NOW via MAGNETIC MOON RECORDS
Focus Track “Picasso Blue” Premieres with Atwood Magazine
MARCH 17, 2023 (Nashville, TN) — Hard work yields results whether it’s with our hands or with our heads. Nashville’s Alicia Blue knows the trials of facing her psychology firsthand, and she wrote about both the process and the outcome for her Inner Child Work EPs, Pt.2 of which arrives today, March 17, via Magnetic Moon Records. Both sets are produced by former Cage the Elephant guitarist Lincoln Parish.
“I got my first therapist in 2019,” Alicia recently revealed to Music Existence. “That person, they’re kind of like a teacher to me… The work we were doing was causing me to hang out with these orphan parts of myself. We all have that, all humans have it. We have all these parts and usually they’re young, because the developed parts of us are the ones who can do whatever they want to do if they’re ready. But it’s all of these young parts that sort of run amok inside of us.”
The new EP serves as a bookend for last year’s Inner Child Work PT.1, a companion piece that continues a journey of personal growth and healing. But if Pt. 1 is rife with a sense of turmoil, featuring the defiant “Don’t Tell Me To Smile“ and “Dog Days In L.A.“, which frames the complexity of her relationship to the city she hails from with an unadorned, acoustic ballad, the five songs out today on Inner Child Work PT. 2 radiate with the taut strength of perseverance.
Amid the contagious, frenetic energy of “I Want it Faster” she confronts the warring sides of herself, battling against the quicksand of old patterns. “Young,” which was co-written and played on by John Paul White of The Civil Wars, serves as a pivotal moment in the song cycle that finds Alicia frustrated with our cultural fantasy of remaining ‘forever young.’ For a woman struggling to heal the toddler within, she lets us know in no uncertain terms: she’s ready to grow up and get on with the show.
Elsewhere on Pt. 2, there’s a hard-won sense of resolve. As Alicia likes to tell us, “the dust settles,” particularly on “Believer” and the stunning “Picasso Blue,” a philosophical anthem that ties the whole project together, which premiered exclusively via Atwood Magazine yesterday.
Photo Credit: Tammie Valer
“Picasso Blue” traverses the lines between the mediums of visual and musical art to create a metaphor about the Spanish painter’s ‘Blue Period,’ which depicts cheerless images of subjects that emulate profound depression.
“I’d been living with a filter that felt eerily as though I was part of that, part of what Picasso was saying during this period,” Alicia explains. “A little too cool, with sadness throughout, and a frustration that I couldn’t see it another way. ‘Picasso Blue’ is a song about changing that pattern, or at least admitting that it needed to happen.”
Written during her relocation to Nashville as a Los Angeles native, the songs that comprise Inner Child Work represent an upheaval, leaning into a deep conversation about mental health. But just as much as writing them helped Alicia process her own struggles, they’re meant to leave breadcrumbs for listeners to find.
“These Inner Child Work EPs and my existence as an artist come from a need to connect and develop relationships—yet simultaneously I’ve always felt like this lone candle in a dark room,” Alicia expresses, describing the self-reflection she employed in writing the songs.
For both EPs, the former Los Angeles native found herself working with aforementioned Nashville-based songwriter and producer Lincoln Parish, who helped to provide a solid musical foundation for the new songs, allowing her to focus on conjuring her most creative songwriting to date. Recording in Nashville also gave Alicia a perspective on her life in Los Angeles; having been born and raised in Southern California, and never having left the city, not even for college.
Releasing her debut EP in 2019, fate fell immediately for her with worldwide in-store play at Starbucks and Spotify playlisting, which has remained ongoing. Features in Billboard, Atwood Magazine and LA’s legendary KCRW soon followed. In January 2023, she was featured in American Songwriter’s “16 Artists to Watch in 2023” and was interviewed for a segment on NPR‘s Dante’s Old South scheduled to run this month.
Tracklist
1.“Best Hands“
2. “Picasso Blue“
3. “Young (feat. John Paul White)”
4. “I Want It Faster”
5. “Believer“
“Picasso Blue” is now out via Magnetic Moon and can be streamed here. The full EP Inner Child Work Part 2 is also out now, via Magnetic Moon.
