Alicia Blue has today released her new EP ‘Inner Child Work, Part 2’, from her series of the same name. Documenting the development of finding solace and peace in yourself and others around you, the ‘Inner Child Work’ series delves into those aspects that complete the self and contains the id, and develops the super-ego.
Musically, while divers from track to track, each feeling and lyrical set are nicely contained in a soundtrack of expression. Taking that into account, these songs musically fit what they are conveying. Inner peace.
About Alicia Blue & ‘Inner Child’
Singer-songwriter Alicia Blue learned how to ask herself the tough questions in writing both of her Inner Child Work EPs and the residual growth is something to behold. Making peace with the defiant, impulsive youngster within and readying them for full-on adulting is a daunting process, but Alicia tackles it all with admirable grace and honesty through eleven songs spread over two triumphant EPs.
The awaited second installment arrives on March 17 via Magnetic Moon Records, preceded by a trio of singles and supplemented with two striking covers along the way.
Like a multicolored leaf steadily drifting to the ground on a warm fall afternoon, “Believer” is rife with a sense of merged endings and beginnings. “It’s a song for when the dust settles,” Alicia affirms. “It’s the twilight of mind that occurs after the confusion is over. It’s what is left, after a storm, which is also very human in this case. Reckoning with the cynic within, compassion towards what has hardened over time, but still a hopefulness for the future.”
Written amid her relocation to Nashville as a Los Angeles native, Inner Child Work represents an upheaval, but the payoffs are plentiful, offering a sense of resolution and a way forward in a lyrical conversation about mental health. Inner Child Work PT. 1 featured the defiant “Don’t Tell Me To Smile” and “Dog Days In L.A.”, the latter of which frames the complexity of her relationship to the city she hails from with an unadorned, acoustic ballad. Inner Child Work PT. 2 includes the frenetic single, “I Want It Faster,” and “Young,” a compelling dismissal of our cultural fantasy about remaining ‘forever young’ in favor of growing up and getting on with the show, which was co-written and played on by John Paul White of The Civil Wars.
“These Inner Child Work EPs 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,” Alicia expresses, describing the self-reflection she employed in writing the songs. For both EPs, the former Los Angeles native found herself working with aforementioned Nashville-based songwriter and producer Lincoln Parish, who helped to provide a solid musical foundation for the new songs, allowing her to focus on conjuring her most creative songwriting to date. Recording in Nashville also gave Alicia a 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. “These songs are really just about the difficulty of navigating this life and not having all the proper tools to live it in the most successful way. And by successful, I mean the healthiest way. I like to think that getting this all out helps me.”
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 2023, she was featured in American Songwriter’s “16 Artists to Watch in 2023”.
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