According to modern science, more than ninety percent of the universe is composed of dark matter. That is, mass we can neither see nor understand. Though—we’re trying. We’re always trying. As Asheville songwriter Julia Sanders’ forthcoming album, titled Dark Matter (due out May 16th) in reference to this ubiquitous phenomenon, opens: This girl’s been asking why since she was just a kid.
Throughout the record, Sanders brings a bold, generous vulnerability from her inner world to the outer, masterfully bridging gaps between the two.
The daughter of a painter and a sculptor, Sanders knew the power of creativity from a young age. She learned to play the violin around age five. In middle school, she picked up the guitar and never put it down again. Though, the idea of making music in a professional capacity seemed elusive to Sanders, if not alien—“I thought of it like this mysterious thing that happened in secret studios, on a different planet”— until, in her twenties, she moved to New Orleans. Neighbors like Sam Doores of The Deslondes and Alynda Segarra of Hurray For The Riff Raff brought the process back down to earth. “I’d see these people play their songs around the fire, or in bars, and it all immediately seemed so much more organic.” Amidst the supportive voices of an artist community, Sanders quieted the one inside herself that had told her not to try.
In 2016, Sanders made the move to Asheville. North Carolina offered a spacious quietude, a mountainous hush, where she says, “it was easier to hear myself.” She released her first full-length On the Line in 2018, followed by Morning Star in 2022. Though all along, Sanders kept her NOLA community closely involved, many of whom made their own migrations to the Land of the Sky. For her third album, she enlisted longtime collaborator John James Tourville to produce, and artists like close friend Esther Rose, Julie Odell, and Erica Lewis of Tuba Skinny to feature. There’s a fit rawness to the forthcoming collection, an off-kilter grit reminiscent of The Velvet Underground and Mazzy Star. Sanders’ melodious vocals draw quick comparison to Natalie Merchant, lithe and lilting and occasionally bent with twang. She opts for a textured imperfection in the recordings, a form of sonic solidarity with the roughness of her subject matter.
“The album takes on really difficult questions,” Sanders says. “But the point isn’t to answer them. It’s to surrender. To the unknown. To the invisible magic that—hey, turns out—makes up most of our world.”
Today Glide is offering an exclusive premiere of the album’s title track, which finds Sanders teaming up with fellow songstress Esther Rose to give us a cool and collected work of folk-rock that shimmers with its catchy chorus and thoughtful lyricism. Simple guitars and a driving beat allow Sanders’ melodious vocals that feel reminiscent of Natalie Merchant to shine as she ponders life’s big questions. For Sanders, this infectious tune is yet another expression of both her no-frills yet impactful approach to music and songwriting.
Sanders describes the inspiration behind the song:
“This song became a way to write about the unknowns we live with every day and the ways in which we try so hard to create meaning. It begins with a line about the seemingly endless instinct to wonder why, but the older I get, the more I resonate with the later verse: The only thing to master / live in question need no answer.”
LISTEN:
