salvia plath – the moniker of New Zealand-based artist Daniel Johann Lines – has surprise-released a new album, last chance to see, via Danger Collective Records. It marks the 27-year-old’s self-first album in 10 years, following his self-released debut, melanchole. Listen to it below.
While melanchole has become an internet cult favorite on platforms like Tumblr and TikTok, Lines decided to stay out of the spotlight, attending the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington and quietly releasing music under different aliases like Adore, 1996, and his name, Daniel Johann. “These songs thematically tie in with what people who are still listening to the first album might need to hear: young people who struggle to make meaningful relationships,” he said in a statement. “With melanchole, there’s no real closure, and there’s no real path forward. You’re stuck with this stunted teenage philosophy of vague nihilism that I’m trying to replace with a more constructive philosophy.”
Lines performed, mixed, and recorded everything on the new LP, with the exception of drum tracks played by Samuel Austin. “I was 15 when I recorded melanchole and I couldn’t have made it sound good,” Lines commented. “The reality of the sound of that record is that I didn’t know what I was hearing or how to fix it.”
Lines concluded: “This is a record about how people behave, the difficulties of adult relationships, and having people do things that are against your code of ethics. That’s a particularly relevant message for people who gravitated towards melanchole because there was no actual prognosis there. I want people to experience a different kind of music and show them something they didn’t expect.”
