Skullcrusher has announced a new album, And Your Song is Like a Circle, which arrives October 17 via her new label home Dirty Hit. Today, Helen Ballentine has unveiled the lead single ‘Exhale’, her first new music since under the moniker since 2022’s Quiet the Room. The track swirls with inspiration and lets it all out in a wondrous haze. Ballentine conceptualized its accompanying video in collaboration with director Adam Alonzo and shot it in Upstate New York in and around her mother’s house. Check it out below.
“’Exhale’ is about noticing the moment when a song is first conceived,” Ballentine explained. “There is a part of me that wants to stop there and leave the song unfinished, before structure settles in and the song evolves. Instead, I allow it to form & accept whatever it may become. This process feels natural, like taking a pause at the top of your inhale before letting it all out. Maybe through acknowledging this process I can feel more at peace with change in general. When thoughts, words & sounds interact in a certain way they can reveal a path forward. Sometimes I want to linger before this path, in a space that feels hidden and safe, but in the end I take the path & surrender to change.”
Ballentine tracked the new album at home, with Aaron Paul O’Brien in Los Angeles, and co-producer Isaac Eiger (Lauren Balthrop, Cassandra Jenkins) in New York. “I like thinking about my work as a collection, and every time I add more to it, I’m adding a rock,” she remarked. “Eventually it might form a circle. Each time Imake something, I’m putting another line around the body of work. It feels like I’ll be trying to trace it for my whole life.”
Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with Skullcrusher.
And Your Song is Like a Circle Cover Artwork:
And Your Song is Like a Circle Tracklist:
1. March
2. Dragon
3. Living
4. Maelstrom
5. Changes
6. Periphery
7. Red Car
8. Exhale
9. Vessel
10. The Emptying
