Daiana Feuer on September 6th, 2016

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“Stage Four,” the new album by post-hardcore band Touché Amoré, was written about the passing of frontman Jeremy Bolm’s mother, who died of cancer in 2014. Digging into his emotions at every stage of mourning while reflecting on special moments they shared, the album features songs like “Skyscraper” — with guest vocalist Julien Baker — which describes the time he and his brother took their mother to visit New York City before she passed.

“My mother always dreamed of New York City,” Bolm says. “When she was diagnosed with cancer, I knew I had to make the trip happen. … My brother, her and I hit every tourist location imaginable. Aside from the cancer making her weak, she had severe scoliosis which prevented her from being on her feet too long, so we pushed her all over the city in a wheelchair. It got us to the front of every line as if she were royalty to everyone, not just me.”

Touched by the songs created by his bandmate, the band’s “resident art director/designer/guitar player” Nick Steinhardt created the album’s artwork as a reflection of Bolm’s experience packing up his mother’s belongings in her home. Steinhardt teamed up with collage artist Anthony Gerace and photographer Ryan Aylsworth to document the house in a before-and-after book, showing the home full of her things and then empty after she passed. “It’s a documentation and visual story of re-arranging and compartmentalizing emptiness along with the warmth of the human imprint while moving through life’s natural course,” Steinhardt says.

The book and 28 of the original artworks will be displayed at a pop-up gallery in Echo Park (1814 Sunset Blvd.) for four nights, Sept. 14-17, with an opening reception attended by the band and artist on the 14th from 7 to 10 p.m. “Stage Four” is out Sept. 16 via Epitaph Records.

||| Watch: “Skyscraper”

||| Live: Touché Amoré perform Sept. 24 at Fox Theater Pomona.