Alicia Blue Shares New Dark Indie-Folk Track 'Saline Waters'

Nashville-based magnetic indie-folk singer-songwriter Alicia Blue says her newest single "Saline Waters" (from her new EP Inner Child Work out on July 15 via Magnetic Moon) is about facing mortality and is like a "darker and more aggressive take on Joni Mitchell's' classic 'Circle Game.' It's essentially a tender message about what is seemingly the least tender thing we all must one day face, meaning death','" she says.

The track is a dark reflection of 2021, the second year of the pandemic. She adds, "I was now beginning my own year of magical thinking, having lost three people in a span of 12 months. I found myself with my best friend taking a drive down to Salton Sea on New Year's Day. It's a dead sea without a living thing spared and it fascinated me."

Far from the bright lights and "keeping up with the Joneses'" energy of LA, the Salton Sea was a place where Alicia found herself exploring her own personal comfort in greif. "Too much of something caused this, and that was salt. The white sand was rough beneath our feet, until we looked closer and realized it wasn't sand at all," she explains, drawing a metaphor with the Salton Sea surroundings and the sense of loss that surrounded her at the time.

"It was billions of fragmented fish bones, sea life that once was... skeletons for sand. There was a strange thing that happened that inspired 'Saline Waters.' There was a friendliness in the space. I found some comfort there, at Salton Sea, where everything is dead, but just is as it is...and it's all very beautiful," she says.

The former Los Angeles native found herself working with Nashville-based songwriter and producer Lincoln Parish, originally of the band Cage the Elephant. Parish helped to provide a solid musical foundation for her songs-including some new guitar progressions, textures, and riffs-so she could focus on doing her best, most creative writing work to date. Inner Child Work finds her grappling with some long-overdue emotional reckonings.

"I didn't grow up with any faith or trust in what you might call self-help or anything like that," she says. "I got my first therapist a few years ago and realized there were things holding me back from doing what I wanted with my life. Things like anxiety, depression-I just had no language to describe them previously, so there was no way to deal with their existence."

Recording in Nashville also gave Blue 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, she began to see in hindsight how much personal turmoil she had navigated through her years there.

"Every time I write a song, it's deeply connected to some chaos that was never figured out," Blue says. There are moments on Inner Child Work that focus on more immediate, pressing matters, like "Saline Waters", while the witty indie rock "DTMTS (Don't Tell Me To Smile)" states in no uncertain terms the narrator's frustration with being told she'd look prettier and/or happier if she'd just smile.

Even when noting her admiration for authors like Jack Kerouac and Joan Didion, as well as songwriter/poets like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, it's still difficult to pin down her exact musical influences on Inner Child Work-and that's exactly how the California singer-songwriter likes it. Although her folk roots are never far from the surface, the EP/album encompasses '90s alternative rock ("Dirty Hippie"), and even Tori Amos-esque introspection ("Fine").

Inner Child Work is indeed just the beginning for Alicia Blue, as it's an EP that finds her examining who she was and setting her sights on where she wants to be. "This EP 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," Blue says. "My artistry and the album have this wildness to them. But I can also feel this softening happening. Inner Child Work is caught right at the point of in-between, which I would call healing."

Releasing her first EP in 2019, fate fell immediately for her with Starbucks asking for her song "Magma" to be featured in stores worldwide via their Starbucks Acoustic playlist on Spotify. Garnering immediate attention as a songwriter and singer, Alicia quickly became a pivotal figure on the LA songwriting circuit. She's been featured in publications including Billboard and Atwood Magazine, as well as LA's legendary KCRW.

Alicia Blue's first full-length album Bravebird was released April 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic, securing spots on Spotify's influential Fresh Finds Pop and Fresh Finds Rock playlists and garnering a whole new round of buzz and attention. In January 2021, she was featured at the top of Atwood Magazine's "2021 Artists to Watch."
With new music in hand, Alicia Blue is poised for a breakout this year.

"Saline Waters" is now available via Magnetic Moon and can be purchased/streamed. Inner Child Work will be released on July 15, 2022 via Magnetic Moon.

Listen to the new single here:

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