Stream Whitney Ballen’s Debut Album You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship

Stream Whitney Ballen’s Debut Album You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship

You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship is a mouthy album title, an apt declaration that matches up with Whitney Ballen’s emotional state on her debut full-length. She’s concerned about saying too much all the time, and then not saying anything at all when it really counts.

Her songs are sweeping, cinematic expressions of thoughts long pent-up, spilling out at the most inopportune times. “These are all the things I can’t say to your face,” Ballen sings on “Nothing.” “I’ll have nothing left to say.” The track is all bashing drums and mounting tension and noisy squall, and Ballen uses the instrumentation to say both nothing and everything at once.

Ballen hails from the Pacific Northwest and you can feel the cloudy skies and fresh air in every note. It’s also present in her voice, which feels like a natural wonder in and of itself — equal parts flighty and grounded, it dances around each song with pained resilience. The album is punctuated by echoes and field recordings, so that it always feels like there’s something even bigger going on in the background of the interpersonal reckonings that play out on the main stage.

We’ve heard a few tracks from the album already — “Go,” “Rainier,” and “Fucking” — and today it’s streaming in full on Hype Machine in advance of its official release at the end of the week. Listen to it below.

You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship is out 8/24 via Father/Daughter Records & Substitute Scene Records. Pre-order it here.

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