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CHARLIE HOUSTON’S DEBUT LP, BIG AFTER I DIE, SET FOR RELEASE JANUARY 31, 2025 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS
PRE-SAVE BIG AFTER I DIE HERE
Photo Credit : Matt Barnes // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Fresh off a US tour supporting viral rock stars The Beaches, Charlie Houston announces her debut record, Big After I Die, a 9-song exploration of the precarious and often surreal experience of learning who you are while transitioning between phases of life.
Growing up around Toronto, Houston was the youngest of four siblings. When she was eight years old, her dad, a fellow musician who used to play in local garage punk bands, gifted her a guitar. Whereas many singer-songwriters got their start performing covers, Houston remained focused on “making something that didn’t exist before.” She also began learning how to produce for herself on GarageBand, which felt like “unlocking a whole other world.” Houston’s music has always felt technical in its nuance and attention to detail, where melody and topline interlace themselves seamlessly, and the dreamy sonic exterior almost makes you forget what’s lurking underneath. Her songs are rife with nostalgia: the ghosts of people and places far gone but still fresh with emotional impact. Big After I Die rises from the ashes of these past experiences: Houston scrapped an entire hypothetical album after going through an intense break up. The songs she had written during a period of domestic bliss were now reminders of life’s many paths. “I didn't really know who I was or who I wanted to be outside of her,” explains Houston. That searching would soon become the focus of her debut album.
Today, she shares another single from the album, "Lewps", a riff-heavy alternative pop single that evokes the genre-shifting vibes of Tame Impala and Yves Tumor. The album's lead single about overthinking embarrassing moments to a point of insanity features Houston's signature humour and honesty.
“I often find myself reliving my most embarrassing moments months or years later for absolutely no reason,” says Houston. “I think this is a very relatable problem. I find it hard to be present, I’m always thinking about the past and things I wish I could have done differently. Such as one time while playing baseball with my ex-girlfriend and her friends I tried to run to first base and ate it before I even got there.”
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MORE ABOUT BIG AFTER I DIE
Houston’s break-up wasn’t the first time she had to pick up the pieces: after high school, she was accepted to New York’s prestigious Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, and attended for one semester before dropping out after a bad experience with psychedelics left her with paralyzing, existential anxiety about her greater purpose. Moving back to Ontario to attend Queen's University, she reconnected with an old friend who encouraged her to start writing her own original material again.
“Since I had gone to NYU for music, leaving felt like a failure.” explains Houston. “But I began to see a new path in music as an artist that I don’t think I would have discovered had I stayed at NYU.”
Working with producer Chris Yonge, Houston signed to storied indie label Arts & Crafts to release her debut 5-song EP I Hate Spring in 2021. Her naturally inviting, plainspoken voice over downtempo electronic production caught the attention of popular electronic duo ODESZA. The resulting collaboration landed her a spot on their Grammy Award-nominated album, The Last Goodbye, and North American stadium tour. Houston then joined rising pop star Charlotte Cardin as a support act on her cross-country Canadian tour before releasing her sophomore EP 2022’s Bad Posture. By 2023, Houston had racked up millions of streams, landed a Spotify billboard in New York’s Times Square, and earned the praise of tastemakers like Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, all before she finished her undergraduate degree. Yet while she had begun to rebuild faith in herself, she continued to struggle to find purpose in the milestones that she’d accomplished.
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“I think the philosophical anxiety I developed at NYU towards not just my own purpose, but the purpose of humans generally was something that I felt like I had to get rid of. I went to therapy and started taking medication to try and stop these thoughts. But I’ve started to realize that these thoughts and that experience in New York has made me who I am. I’m weirded out and confused by my own existence and I’m okay with that”
Houston’s longstanding creative partnership with her producer had always been reassuringly comfortable: “Chris [Yonge] and I had such a formula we knew worked, but it was really focused on writing to the beat. I was interested in challenging myself and putting my songwriting first as opposed to production.” For Big After I Die, Houston leaned into more dynamic songwriting, inspired by musicians like Courtney Barnett that made “music that is thrown in front of you”. For the first time, “the songs were all written without touching a computer,” with no plan of connecting the tracks to a greater concept album. It was only after returning to the collection of songs that she was able to connect the dots and realize there was an overarching story to the music. “Lighter,” a breakthrough track that sparked many of the other songs on the album, intones: “I’ll be lost / if I’m not right for you,” pinpointing the intense anxiety she continues to navigate around being alone. Houston’s struggles with mental health permeate the album: on the frenetic “Lewps” she decries the “loops inside my head” over and over. The record is a documentation of Houston’s attachment issues of finding herself through others, an idea she continues to return to. Initially written from the vantage point of a romance, the downtempo “Spiral” explores the tendency to seek solace in other people, and being scared to lose someone to a personal fault. “I think I’ve always been terrified to lose people because I have a habit of centering my life and happiness around one person. So losing them can feel like losing everything” she explains.
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While Big After I Die grapples with the intense emotions and heavy themes of codependency, sonically Houston takes a much more playful approach, and sounds the most comfortable she's ever been. Working alongside new creative partner Duncan Hood, all the tracks were recorded as slow indie folk songs with acoustic guitar and piano, while being infused with Houston’s trademark quirky realism and attention to joyful experimentation. Initially, many of the songs on the project were written through the lens of love songs, but in hindsight they transformed into greater contemplations about who she is meant to be, and how she continues to grow. "Experiencing life alone for the first time,” Houston feels at home and settled into her body, including her queerness: “it’s very evident one song is about a girl (rollicking, upbeat highlight “Pink Cheetah Print Slip”)”.
The title Big After I Die is taken less as a literal idea and more about “this desire that I feel to keep developing and growing after the ending,” whether the end of a specific relationship or a period of time in her life. Although she just graduated with a degree in philosophy, the record is her own personal thesis examining her search to find greater meaning in life: the omnipresent, existential questions that she had been fixated on for so long. It also signifies a rebirth, of faith in herself and her intuition. Houston went back and forth on whether she should write a song that felt triumphant, an optimistic conclusion to the end of one transitional period, but ultimately decided against it. For Houston, it’s not the end that needs to be celebrated: life is just beginning.
PRE-SAVE BIG AFTER I DIE HERE
Tour Dates:
Nov 21: Montreal, QC / M for Montreal
BIG AFTER I DIE TRACKLIST
01 Pink Cheetah Slip
02 Lighter
03 Salt
04 Stupid Love
05 Spiral
06 Slut For Excel
07 The Descent
08 Lewps
09 I Need U
PRAISE FOR CHARLIE HOUSTON
“Sometimes the words don't come immediately — after all, asking someone to be that vulnerable isn't easy — and it can take all night before you feel ready. But when that moment happens, let's hope that it can sound and feel as sweet as this indie-pop ode to young love. CBC Music on “All Night”
“... casts back to timeless memories of fumbling early romance—first kisses, messy breakups, and short-lived flirtations are all soundtracked by weightless indie pop and R&B stylings” – Under The Radar
“It’s a striking debut, an unguarded, ultra-personal tapestry—stories of heartbreak and struggle, sung in her soothing, signature voice” – SPIN
“‘Things’ is an unadulterated look at youthful insecurities and unrequited affection. Over a somber but punchy backdrop, she delivers an evocative performance that is ripe with honesty” – EARMILK
