Aistis embarks on an experimental folk odyssey of love, loss and self-discovery with his magnificently moody, multi-faceted new album Clay — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The sophomore full-length from the Lithuanian-Canadian Montrealer, the 11-song alt-folk affair emerged while he was putting the final touches of his upcoming release Caviar For Seagulls. Through a blend of reality and fiction, Clay explores the cyclical nature of complicated relationships, painting an atmospheric soundscape of a character ensnared in romantic complexities.
Clay finds Aistis experimenting with song structure, irregular pacing and injecting his personal brand of theatricality. Rummaging for information inside recollections, rejecting the public or any social formalities, he reckons with letting go of a lover only to inevitably return. Even as Clay is a testament to the malleability of moulding or breaking a fantasy, the atmospheric soundscape paints the picture of a character stuck in a romantic cobweb.
“I had been navigating a relationship with someone that I loved deeply but found ever-confusing, beautiful, sometimes painful, strange, complicated, yet life-affirming,” Aistis says. “I think a lot of Clay started as an exploration of trying to gain a deeper understanding of what it was I was feeling, but sort of morphed into its own entity the further in I went. As the writer/creator of the work, there is inherent bias in my re-telling of history and feeling. This became ever apparent to me the more I wrote, so I decided it would be far more interesting and true to explore my feelings around this relationship by blending elements of reality with intentional fiction and exaggeration, told through the narration of multiple voices. Myself, the muse, and the inner voice, without ever defining who it is that is speaking.
“The journey became non-linear and is full of love, hypocrisy, self-reflection, inside jokes, romanticism, self-deprecation, and beauty. Despite its fictional elements, it somehow feels like the most honest exploration of the love and reverie I hold for this person, for every experience shared together, good or bad, as well as of the self. Throughout the entire process of making Clay, this person remained/remains involved and played/plays a huge role in collaboration, making everything all the more special, while almost adding to the ethos and mythology of Clay itself.”
The detailed obsessions of previously released single Plateau Botticelli are reassessed in Thought It Over (And I Think You Should Move On), finally giving up in So They Say, just to make his way back through aromatic pleasure in Lilac Perfume. The journey is non-linear and takes us through the acceptance of getting what we can from our intimacies. The Mouse In The Kitchen prematurely closes the curtain of the album with a hushed lullaby serenading an exit, by banishing all desire to curl up by the fire alone. The title track ends in a piano ballad that reminds once again, that love can endlessly linger and shapeshift, as the pieces of clay are relinquished and divided.
“Thematically, I always write in loose themes and with the larger scope of an album in mind, but it is not always clear how it will fit together until I write a batch of songs and start to see a throughline,” Aistis says. “Sometimes the theme reveals itself, other times you have to search for and guide it. This seems to be the way things came together for Clay. A few songs unveiled themselves, and then they informed the rest of the writing, revealing something larger in scope.”
The narrative musings are persuasive, isolating, poignant, descriptive, true, and untrue — wrestling with his place romantically in order to plug himself back into the world. Aistis uses songs to claw through and understand, but ultimately acknowledges the album becomes another artifact of a disillusioned story. He offers an inverted conversation of self-development, letting go of what’s pressing in order to have an authentic relationship with himself.
Using wit and candor as a mortar and pestle to grind his ego into fine granules of emotional truth, Aistis takes inspiration from storytellers like David Berman, Leonard Cohen and Andy Shauf. His 2017 debut Love Me, I’m Bored was riddled with nostalgia and hypersensitivities unleashed in vast sonic landscapes. Throughout his discography, you can feel Aistis freeing himself through poetic repetition and detailed orchestral sound, including his captivating singles Dumb Dumb In Distress, Desert Blue and his most recent offering Lover Of Creation.
Listen to Clay below and follow Aistis on Instagram.
