Track By Track: White Birches – A New Reign

Swedish duo White Birches bring primal, earthy tones to electronica and industrial soundscapes on their new album, A New Reign.

Filled with strong imagery, vibrant vocals, and songs with strong emotional themes and strong, visceral arrangements, fans of EMMON, Lizette Lizette, Bestial Mouths, and Ionnalee will find a lot to love in A New Reign’s tales of life, death, grief, and memories that link those nexus points together.

Breathing

Breathing was the first single released from the album, and it is also one of the first songs to make it to A New Reign. It deals with the overwhelming task of handling grief, when the act of breathing is an accomplishment.

This track started with Fredrik sending over a rough track with the beat, distinctive bass line and the two synths that intertwine and build like waves. This in turn led to the analogy of water as something both soothing and dangerous. For the chorus Jenny wrote the piano melody based on the bass line from the verse, so as to create the white foam of a dark wave.

A New Reign

A New Reign, the title track, deals with two parallel stories. It centers on a wish to hand over responsibility to someone else. To make the weight on one’s shoulders a bit lighter. When you feel like you’ve done enough and all you want is rest.

At the same time, it centers on the mere responsibility to prepare the person next in line for adulthood. It is hard to hand over the crown… This was a song we struggled with quite a bit when it came to finding the arrangement. It slept in the cloud drive as a piano/vocal track for many moons until it found its shape.

Salt the Earth

There are two love songs on the album, and this is one of them. A destructive relationship set in an apocalyptic landscape. A pattern of finding and losing one another over and over. Even as they have obliterated all chances, salted the earth and walked away, the cycle restarts.

The heart wants what the heart wants, even if the outcome is certain. Salt the Earth was one of the last songs written for the album. The lyrics are based on the conceptual metaphor ‘Love is war’. Yes, we know, super pretentious and overly intellectual… But it turned out pretty special.

Blood

For Blood, we returned to the subject of grief. The song was long named just #12 in our files, as Jenny did not dare to start writing the lyrics, knowing it would hurt. In the beginning it was a triple-time piano track, but that did not fit.

Jenny started stacking notes on top of each other with the sustain pedal pressed to the floor. A dissonant room. A bass turned backwards. A guitar, more noise than chords. Then Fredrik added a heart-wrenching electric piano. Losing a loved one and being transformed. Grieving both the person and the self that no longer exist.

Femton

Finally, we get to just rest in sound. Counting to fifteen (femton in Swedish). Fredrik sent over a track with just the bass and rhythm section. We asked our friend Emeli Jeremias to add a chaotic cello. Perfect. Jenny improvised some piano and counted to femton. Is there a hidden message? Maybe…

Part of This

Well, the break from trying times did not last long. Grief is a strange creature. And the hard thing is that your grief is your own. No one else experiences it in the exact same way, even if the person lost is shared. It is yours to carry. And that is lonely and terrifying. They say there are different stages to grief, but the lineage between them is not straight.

Often anger, sadness, shock, and acceptance exist simultaneously. This song was almost cut from the album a number of times, as we could not find its form. The song melody changed over and over, and the last changes came mid-final mix. Jon Bordon (fabulous mixer/engineer/musician) had to scrap the vocals in the almost finished mix, as the melody felt off, and Jenny rerecorded the choruses.

Primal

Primal is the second love song of the album, or as we have called it throughout the process, “our queer anthem”. Love outside the norm is an act of rebellion. And as the world seems to implode around us, we need to hold on, fight back, stay visible, remember those who came before and keep falling into our lovers’ arms with pride.

Primal was one of the first songs selected for the album, but its shapes have been many. It started as an anthem and ended up like this. The arrangement discussions have caused breakdowns and shattered friendships. But in the end, we are really proud of it. And we are also honoured to have singer and composer Katharina Nuttall do a guest appearance.

The Writing’s on the Wall

This was the first song written for the album. Written before many of the things happened that came to define the journey of A New Reign. The Writing’s on the Wall is a bridge between our previous album, When the Street Calls, and this one.

The song is inspired by the end of the world, and it almost wrote itself. The vocals on it are actually from the original demo, and that goes for the slightly out-of-tune guitar as well. We love it.

Solace

Solace was the last song written for the album. It symbolises that first moment a sense of life returns after you have gone through hard times. You know it will not last, but you try to hold on to it as long as you can. If Breathing focuses on staying alive, Solace deals with actually living. Even if it’s just for a minute.

A New Reign is out now via Progress Productions to stream on Bandcamp and Spotify. You can find out more about the album by checking out White Birches on their Instagram, Facebook, and BlueSky social accounts.