Los Angeles-based See Night’s new indie-rock album Just Another Life is a shoegaze / dreampop / psych reflection on the lives we lead and ultimately leave behind to start fresh.
See Night is the project of guitarist and singer-songwriter Linda Sao, who tours with drummer Cory Aboud, guitarist Patrick Andrews, and bassist AJ Marquez, all known for an explosive live show, and also solo in the U.S., EU and UK.
Just Another Life a moody meditation on ever-changing relationships and life chapters. It’s a treatise on a wanderlust that was stifled during the pandemic lockdown and the driving urge to be a touring musician. And like that dynamic between its contrasting themes of leaving and homecoming, the tracklist itself is an ebb and flow—from the garage-rock fuzzy guitar opener, through two piano instrumentals, to the romantic orchestral shoegaze of “Sober & High,” and finally to the lo-fi acoustic outro song.
Listen to Just Another Life
Just Another Life is a calculated album that should be listened to as a whole.
Sao is a Vietnamese-American whose parents met during the Vietnam War, and the band name pays homage to her family history and, specifically, to the Sea Knight helicopter her father flew during the war as a U.S. Navy pilot. Her father passed away last year, and this album connects directly to him; aditionally, most of the album was written during Sao’s pandemic isolation in San Francisco and were intentional homecomings to her core singer-songwriter styles.
From the big rock guitars of “Being Good Is Supposed To Be Easy,” to the dreamy enchantment of ”LA Traffic,” “Gravity” and “Sober & High,” to the cinematic piano interstitials, to the delicately intimate bedroom recording of “NYC Coats,” the themes of love, loss and moving on to a new life shine through. Close your eyes and allow this album’s sonic representations of human emotions to wash over you—to move you with the cyclical universality of metaphorical death and rebirth.
In Just Another Life, Sao confronts her place in this new life that she’s built for herself, the loss of her father, moments of longing and leaving, and—ultimately—moments of feeling at home with a person or place.
“Throughout the pandemic, all I wanted to do was tour again,” says Sao. “I’ve lived many lives and I’ve now moved to L.A. for family reasons, which was a huge leap…leaving a whole life behind. My father’s passing was another part of my life that was lost, and it marked a new reality. This album feels like I’m stepping into a new light.”
