Lina Tullgren Decide Which Ways the Eyes Are Looking

Hello and welcome to Decide Which Way The Eyes Are Looking, the new record by LinaTullgren. It is a deeply gorgeous intervention, a carefully ornamented dilemma, the mostinviting crisis. Made with a host of Los Angeles musicians, Decide exposes Tullgren'sdaring and trust. Each song is a ring of curious sound: the skip of harp strings, the flutterof woodwinds, the ratchet of percussion, the euphonium's sigh. And at the center of eachwreath, Tullgren sings, finding this space between Judee Sill and Sam Jayne. It's a tonethat signals weariness, but a weariness hand-in-hand with tenacity. There's a clarity, akind of immovability.Lina Tullgren's first record came in 2016, a homemade, under-the-skin set of laments.Subsequent LPs and constant touring cemented Tullgren's reputation as a composer of"wide-eyed wonder paired with a resonant despair." 2019's Free Cell showed Tullgrenlingering in the margins of their songs, finding places both aloof and spare. Floodgatesopened; Tullgren spent the subsequent years exploring deep listening, improvised music,and extended technique. They developed a patience and faith in cooperation that rangedat the far edge of song. Collaborations with Mayo Thompson and Claire Rousay furtheredthis development. This was not a break with the past for Tullgren, rather it was anopportunity to see how far a song could go. And from that distance, deep in a landscapeof drone and tension, Tullgren returned to the bright vulnerability of a lyric and a hook.Weaving together the affective and the radical, Tullgren took the quiet isolation of ashoreline cabin to write the songs that would become Decide Which Way The Eyes AreLooking.For Tullgren, Decide is a culmination of all the work they've done throughout their life: themelodic, the dense, the confessional, the unknowable. It's also a tribute to collaboration.Describing the sessions as having "a lot of space and a lot of ease," Tullgren invitedmusicians from a vast field of songmaking to play on the recording: Leng Bian, ZachBurba, Luke Csehak, Corey Fogel, Jenny Hirons, Tara Milch, Tim Ramsey, MichaelSachs, Jude Tedaldi, Marta Tiesenga and Ben Varian. Jonny Kosmo's backhouse wasoffered as a cozy, easygoing space for the players to create their parts together, and therecord was completed by Tullgren and Luke Csehak together at their Los Angeles home.In Tullgren's words: "I feel really strongly that this album is a portrait of the community Ifound in Los Angeles."Decide Which Way The Eyes Are Looking is a quiet masterpiece: a generous, memorablejourney. It is the result of five years of labor, the product of abandoning the pop songentirely and starting over. Whatever wanderings or doubt fueled it, Decide is also entirelyat ease: a record on which Tullgren sings "and I know/what to do now" and "I know exactlywhat to do" in subsequent songs, clear in the revelations this path has given them.