Lost Lake Presents Al Olender on Thursday, April 9th.
The weight of change taunts our periphery, smearing lipstick across a heated cheek before those lips have had a chance to say how they felt, really. A blue-black polaroid, held in a pocket, barely makes shapes of its faces before someone takes another photo. Songwriter Al Olender tries to grasp these brief moments in slow-motion, to live in them for just a little while, but finds that the tighter she holds on, the more these frames fall into a soupy blur. Change is our only constant, but what if we wanted to steep in the now? What if we could stay right here? Olender captures the anxieties of an ever-moving world on her second full-length album The Worrier, where all are invited to mourn the fleeting nature of our experiences and yell into the ether.
“It’s a new season of my life but how do I hold on to everything I love?” she asks. “Is change almost worse than the loss I’ve experienced?” After the sudden death of her older brother Keith, Olender found reprieve in her songwriting and built a beautiful community in her home of Kingston, NY. Now older than Keith was when he passed, Olender finds that as she enters new phases of her life––ones that Keith never got to experience––new forms of grief and worry bubble to the surface. “Every year is a little further from him and that’s the sad hard truth. He is never far from any of these songs.” As she has grown, Olender has come to realize that she now loves people in different ways, never holding back from discovering every aspect of herself: anxiety, sexuality and anarchy, both in herself and in her relationships. Although she’s in an almost constant state of worry, she can also hold the beauty and luck that her life beholds. The Worrier nourishes these contradictions.
Olender has crafted an album that captures our most important moments but doesn’t try to create meaning or resolution. These are brief, beautiful glimpses into the characters that adorn our stories, nourishing the person we become or hope to be. “I’ve been so good at pushing things away and not confronting them and then losing people,” Olender explains. “In this season of life, the best part is that I can talk; even in the hard moments, even crying on FaceTime, even being away. I’ve been lucky to have such incredible women that have given me chances and let me fail and let me disappear, and still, they have not abandoned me.” The Worrier is the chance to be a better version of ourselves. It says: we’re still here and we’re trying our best.
- All ages, ticketed guests under 16 ONLY ADMITTED WITH TICKETED GUARDIAN 21+
- All sales are final. Check your tickets carefully, NO REFUNDS FOR ANY REASON
- Your name will be on the Will Call list the night of the show at doors time.
