Lana Winterhalt commands the spotlight with her gorgeous and introspective new album Recovering Theatre Kid — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The third and most fully realized album from the prolific Winnipeg singer-songwriter and producer, Recovering Theatre Kid finds Winterhalt perched somewhere between the musical equivalents of starstruck starlet and seasoned character actor. On the one hand, her rich, piano-driven indie-pop soliloquies find her personifying the outsized qualities you might expect from that album title — dramatic, emotional, charismatic, sparkly, larger than life. On the other, the tenderhearted openness and emotionally grounded intimacy of her monologues — not to mention her impeccable songcraft and tastefully understated production — make it obvious she hasn’t lost the plot.
Fittingly, Winterhalt refers to herself as an “introverted extrovert… chaotically balanced between a life on the stage as a performer and life as a hermited music producer, crafting a sonic universe for listeners to walk around and get lost in.” Those worlds collide magnificently on Recovering Theatre Kid.
According to her press kit: “Lana wraps gentle feelings of nostalgia in swirls of strings and dreamy synths on songs like Static, and powerful feelings of betrayal and regret into epic, climactic, musical-theatre-inspired ballads like Please Don’t Let Me Go. Her insomnia takes centre stage on songs like Rattling In My Head and Bean, where late-night thoughts of insecurity and doubt are free to wander around in the silence of the night. This album is the new companion to anyone who has been told they’re ‘too much’ or ‘not enough.’ ”
Self-produced and engineered by Winterhalt — then mixed and mastered by John Paul Peters at Winnipeg’s Private Ear Recording — Recovering Theatre Kid follows Winterhalt’s three previous EPs, along with the albums If & When (2018) and Diamonds (2019). She also started Winnipeg’s Good + Plenty Producer’s Club, a networking collective for women and gender expansive folks working in the recording industry to share knowledge, support one another, and find opportunities. The club was nominated for a Community Excellence award at the Western Canadian Music Awards (2023), and won the Rising Leader award at the Women in Music Canada Honours event 2024.
Listen to Recovering Theatre Kid below, watch the video for Starstruck above, and send fan mail to Lana Winterhalt on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
