Juanita Stein

Striding out of Howling Bells’ long shadow, Juanita Stein emerges from the rolling plains of ‘America’ and ‘Until The Light Fades’, and clinging to the tracks of her tears on ‘Snapshot’. Her 4th solo album, 'The Weightless Hour', is an intensely human document with a profound sense of dignity. It’s the kind of record which is armed with experience and yet is all the lighter for it, where your attention isn’t demanded and yet effortlessly claimed. There is strength, she has discovered, in restraint.

Stein joined forces once more with long-time collaborator, the producer Ben Hillier, whose direction can be felt in the works of Depeche Mode, Doves, Blur and Elbow.

In removing most instrumental additions beyond the guitar (and you will notice there are no drums on the LP), with ‘The Weightless Hour’, Stein made a subconscious choice to make the project entirely her own. In the space freed by the stripped-back instrumentation, her storytelling bleeds freely like watercolours across a blank page. The album is an intensely human document with a profound sense of dignity. A record on which Stein has found that exploring a more restrained side can yield work that is armed with experience and yet is all the lighter for it, where your attention isn’t demanded and yet is effortlessly claimed. Every sound, every choice, has earned its place.

“I think making records is a really powerful way of letting go of experiences,” Stein notes. “I’m allowing myself to kiss things goodbye.” Through these converging chapters of her life, ‘The Weightless Hour’ feels like an arrival for Juanita Stein: “I’ve finally learned to be okay in space and be loud in my experiences.”