Stream: Leah Capelle, ‘Alder Lake’

Kevin Bronson on August 14th, 2019

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Chicago-bred, L.A.-based singer-songwriter Leah Capelle has a bold, direct style and vibrant musicality that never really goes out of fashion. It’s a craft she has honed ever since she moved to L.A. to further her music education at USC — and one that has seen her become something of a beacon for a lot of women’s issues.

Self-acceptance, identity, positive body image, empowerment … All are topics on the table for Capelle, who comes from the school that believes songwriters are duty-bound to tackle such matters. “What is our responsibility as artists?” she wrote in a guest blog for Talkhouse. “Is it to provide a much needed break from the heaviness of the news? Is it to simply provide entertainment, to become one more distraction from the daily responsibilities of life? Is it to be the voice of our whole generation, or to be just a voice for those who can’t put their feelings into words?”

After releasing EPs in 2015 and ’18 and sprinkling in some singles in between, Capelle has been working on a full-length album. The poignant and insistent “Alder Lake” is her latest single, a tune that harks to a time the songwriter had misplaced her own compass. “I was lost,” she recalls. “I leaned heavily on self-destructive tendencies in an effort to find myself again. I needed to circle back, back to where I felt like myself, back to where I was happy. Alder Lake is a real place, a truly magical getaway that my family built in the woods on a river in Wisconsin. It’s home to some of my fondest lifelong memories… so this song, at its core, is about using little moments frozen in time to let go of past mistakes, and find fulfillment in the present.”

||| Stream: “Alder Lake”