Alison Sudol ('Fantastic Beasts') Releases New Album 'Still Come The Night'

London-based, American singer-songwriter and actress Alison Sudol releases her autobiographical new album Still Come The Night via Kartel Music Group. Formerly known under the moniker A Fine Frenzy, this intimate album is an impassioned effort that signals the welcome return of a unique artist, a powerful voice armed with candid lyrics and authentic musicianship.

Written and co-produced by Alison with London-based multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer Chris Hyson - half of adventurous collective Snowpoet - Still Come The Night owns its intimate sound to the backdrop at Giant Wafer studios, situated in an area of outstanding natural beauty, nestled between sheep fields in the Welsh countryside.

Chris recruited Welsh twin brothers Lloyd and Alex Haines on drums and guitar and engineer Alex Killpatrick to join them at Wafer. There they worked together from morning until midnight, writing song after song, creating a hushed intimacy and sense of space among, even, the many layers of songs with their subtle harmonies and intricate instrumentation.

While making the core of the album (those four songs were written by Alison while isolating at her friend's farm with her partner), she just found out she was pregnant when the world suddenly stopped, filming on Fantastic Beasts - the movie franchise in which Alison stars as Queenie Goldstein - had been indefinitely suspended, the tour with Goldfrapp postponed, and for some reason she couldn't taste or smell anything. The mood in London was strange, tense. No one knew how long this thing would last, and the risk for pregnant women. There, without any wifi, set with the changing seasons and the quiet solitude of their borrowed cottage as the backdrop, the first songs of her intimate and introspective yet powerful, poetic record came quickly and quietly. London went into lockdown. Days later, they lost the baby.

When Alison began writing Still Come the Night, she knew that she wanted to make an album to process the different stages of grief that she and her partner experienced with the loss of their first baby in pregnancy. This new album spans the emotions of Alison's journey, from the exhilaration of early love into the tightrope walk of excitement and uncertainty of pregnancy and ultimately through the complex and mysterious landscape of grief. "I needed this music," shares Alison. "It helped me get through the hardest period of my life without running away from it."

Still Come The Night follows the release of the deeply personal single "Peaches," the poetic cut "Meteor Shower" - released alongside the compelling video premiered by Hunger and directed by Alison's close collaborator and Creative Director Federico Nessi, who is also responsible for the album's art direction. The carefully curated ten-track album also includes the upcoming playful single "Playground," the bucolic "Wasteland," the intimate "Mary of the Willows," which was inspired by one of Alison's favorite poets Mary Oliver and is one of the first songs she wrote for the album.

The title track "Still Come the Night" weaves imagery from the budding world outside with the barren one within, while "Come On Baby," which Alison had written not long after leaving the farm, carries the melancholic atmosphere of those contemplative days. She says: "'Meteor Shower' serves as the book ending to the equally hypnotic opener, 'Bone Tired.' It's the moment of space between one chapter ending and a new one beginning - a moment of uncertainty, the unknown... of possibility. The record begins with exhaustion and ends the same way, but with light pouring in."

Still Come The Night is an album for anyone who has gone through loss to listen to and connect with. Alison taps into the weight of collective grief that we have all experienced over the last two and a half years: isolation, fear, sadness, illness, loss and powerlessness. In the ensuing rush to resume normal life, without enough opportunity for processing it all, it's more important than ever to take the time to sit, listen and feel. "It was important for me to make a record that someone actively grieving could listen to," Alison continues. "I wanted to hold space for emotion, not impress my experience upon someone else. I wanted to hold the listener close to me and sing to them, to be balm rather than purely confrontational."

Now based in London, Alison Sudol is an American singer-songwriter, musician, actress and video director. Having released three critically acclaimed albums under the name A Fine Frenzy during which she toured with Rufus Wainwright and opened for The Stooges at SXSW. Making her comeback to music as Alison Sudol in 2018 she released two EPs, Moon and its follow-up, Moonlite both co-produced with Yard Act and Gruff Rhys' producer Ali Chant, and featuring Portishead's Clive Deamer and Adrian Utley and John Parish. Her acting credits include the Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them franchise and the critically acclaimed TV series Transparent and Dig.

Listen to the new album here: