Lael Neale has shared details of Altogether Stranger, her expansive forthcoming new album, out May 2nd, 2025 worldwide on Sub Pop. She has also shared the album’s centrepiece and haunting lead offering ‘Tell Me How To Be Here’ which paints a stark portrait of Neale’s return to LA after three years living in rural Virginia..
Neale’s quivering and moving voice floats uncertainly above Blakeslee’s ambient tape loops and ghostly, disintegrating Mellotron, its woozy cyclical atmosphere evoking the disorientation of waking up in a world that feels so ordinary it becomes strange. With echoes of the Velvet Underground‘a ‘Sunday Morning‘ it’s Absolutely transfixing in its quiet unfurling melodrama that grasps for grounding. Its official video, which is directed by and stars the singer, captures the song’s kindred spirit. It was filmed by Neale and Blakeslee in Los Angeles, watch it below.
“In the course of writing this record there was one song I could never finish. The main line was, ‘I don’t belong here, I am an altogether stranger.’ I meant ‘stranger’ as a noun, not an adjective. Even though I abandoned the song, the lost chorus stuck with me & became the unspoken motif of the record,” says Neale. Over the long year it took to write Altogether Stranger, she vacillated between childlike optimism and existential melancholy. While she may not have been able to reconcile these opposing states, the attempt led to an ambitious breakthrough for this singular, self-sufficient artist.
Clocking in at just 32 minutes, the 9-song LP covers an unexpected breadth of musical and lyrical terrain – from garage rock nursery rhymes and creation myths to Motorik dance dirges and solitary Omnichord meditations. A brilliant lyricist, Neale has a unique ability to uncover the extraordinary within the mundane, tackling themes of polarity that recur throughout her work – country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, isolation vs. society. This album is her third collaboration with producer Guy Blakeslee who helps expand the tonal palette while staying true to Neale’s commitment to the raw immediacy and hand-made intimacy of home recording.
Altogether Stranger was conceived after three years of oscillating between rural solitude and urban chaos. Neale explains: “On returning to Los Angeles I felt like an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet so I’m writing from the perspective of a being from another realm witnessing the peculiarities of humanity.” The album finds Neale perched at the piano in a hilltop bungalow, looking down on a rare curve of Sunset Blvd. Here, in this daily ritual of writing, singing, and painting—what David Lynch referred to as “the Art Life”—she creates the space for her most adventurous work to date.
Lael Neale will support Altogether Stranger with headlining spring tour dates for April and May 2025. Tickets for these shows are on sale now.
Tour Dates
MAY:
10th: Workman’s Cellar – Dublin
11th: McHughs – Belfast
27th: The Louisiana – Bristol
28th: Omeara – London
29th: YES Basement – Manchester
30th: Cumberland Arms – Newcastle
31st: Hug & Pint – Glasgow
Photo Credit: Seven Ruck
