Aching from the inside out, Byland’s hauntingly beautiful and boldly cinematic “Two Circles” invites us to dwell in our innermost depths as she captures the jarring sensation of feeling a stranger to ourselves.
Stream: “Two Circles” – Byland
You wear the same clothes, you tell the same jokes, you just got older…
A powerful and moving out-of-body experience, Byland’s latest music video truly puts the “haunting” in the phrase hauntingly beautiful.
And if the levitating guitars and spinning lamps don’t get you, the music surely will. Halfway between our sweetest dreams and darkest nightmares, “Two Circles” is a soul-stirring song of dissonance and discord, self-discovery and inner reckoning. It’s a raw, gut-wrenching reflection on imbalance; a breathtaking meditation on disconnection, both to ourselves and to our surroundings. With a soft, delicate touch and a stunningly cinematic delivery, Byland delivers an ode to the kind of turmoil we can’t touch and we can’t see; invisible yet no less palpable, it resides below the surface, brewing in our hearts and boiling in our souls.
Prepare to be soothed, stunned, and shaken: Aching from the inside out, “Two Circles” invites us to dwell in our innermost depths as Byland captures the jarring sensation of feeling a stranger – to our bodies, to our minds, and to our worlds.
I’m am yellow you are green
Just two circles side by side
I don’t think that you know me
We have that in common
I hate my handwriting
And nothing about you
Wish I could see you like a stranger
Can I bum a piece of gum
You wear the same clothes
You tell the same jokes
You just got older
You just got older
Don’t make you wiser
You never grew up
You just got older
You just got older
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the Dark Details (Chris Cunningham)-directed music video for “Two Circles,” a cathartic eruption of unfiltered restlessness and soul-searching and a highlight off Byland’s recently-released sophomore album, Heavy for a While (March 29, 2024 via Mother West Records). The acclaimed musical project of Seattle-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alie Renee Byland and her husband and co-writer Jake Byland, Byland debuted in the late 2010s with a perfect balance of intimate and expansive songwriting and soundscaping: Her stories are and will always be her own, and yet Byland’s bold worlds inevitably feel familiar, each one universal in its own right.
Arriving four years after 2020’s debut album Gray, the shiver-inducing Heavy for a While finds Byland unpacking complex emotions and processing moments from both the past and the present.
Alie Renee Byland describes it as a “therapeutic primal scream” – or the musical manifestation thereof, one that shines a light on her youth as a pastor’s daughter growing up in the inner city of Albuquerque, New Mexico; her young adulthood in Seattle, where she met and married Jake Byland and where they started this musical journey together; and her return to New Mexico in March 2020 – an emotional and difficult homecoming colored by grief, politics, the pandemic, and much more. Heavy for a While refuses to be put into a single box, and yet, with its songs’ themes around heartache, nostalgia, hopefulness, belonging, self-doubt, and so much more, the record stands as a tribute to the human spirit – at once such a fragile, yet indestructible force.
The album’s runaway single thus far (with over 50,000 streams on Spotify and counting), “Two Circles” is ethereal, spine-chilling alt-folk at its finest. Lost in the mire, Byland evokes a sense of instability and anxious agitation; of wayward unmoored floating, aching for an anchor that doesn’t exist. “You wear the same clothes, you tell the same jokes, you just got older,” she sings in an impassioned, emotionally charged chorus, her voice a warm beacon of light in the cool sonic dark. “You just got older, don’t make you wiser; you never grew up, you just got older.”
Jake Byland, who wrote this song’s lyrics, describes it as “meeting another version of yourself at the bar and experiencing for yourself the curiosity and compassion that you might lend a stranger.”
“We all know this person and many of us have been this person – the one that never grew up,” he adds. “While writing the album and this song in particular, I was very inspired by bands like The National and the War On Drugs, who seem to write with sentiments rather than ideas. You feel what the song is about regardless of whether or not you know what the words mean. I wrote the words, but still feel like I’m able to get lost in the song and discover meaning within it.”
For her part, Alie Byland sees (and experiences) “Two Circles” as a multi-dimensional musical and emotional fever dream. “It was an honor to help usher this song into what it is today,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “I helped write the melody, but really, this is a “Jake masterpiece.” It carries a full myriad of ideas and emotions, and feels like it changes meaning each time I get to sing it. I see myself in this song. I see others. I see love, pain, anger, frustration, joy, shame, angst, everything and nothing – a fullness in duality.”
Yesterday I was twenty-five
Tomorrow I am terrified
I’m not good at small talk
I was born with crooked teeth
You’re a chorus, I’m a verse
But I don’t have any words
I hum and I hope
You understand what I don’t
I see love, pain, anger, frustration, joy, shame, angst, everything and nothing – a fullness in duality.
The “Two Circles” music video adds layers fresh meaning and depth to what is already an intense listening experience.
The cinematic visual swaps between lower and higher resolutions, and finds Alie Byland navigating an otherworldly environment. She’s in a home with familiar objects, and yet lamps, chairs, and guitars are spinning on their axes, sometimes floating inexplicably in the air; snow is falling directly over her bathtub; and an eerie red light is coming from a toilet-papered doorway. Walking through it, she finds herself in a new, emptier plane – one where the encroaching darkness is staved off by just a few lantern-like glows.
Director Chris Cunningham explains his vision for the “Two Circles” music video as an exploration of someone stuck in a sort of limbo after death: “They’re wandering around a dreamlike version of their old home, surrounded by material items that once meant a great deal to them,” he says. “These objects (or the memory of them) are starting to separate from the laws of gravity and physics – moving, spinning, and floating by themselves. As the protagonist (Alie) explores her home she starts breaking through into this larger space that’s a little bit unfamiliar, but still populated with memories and objects from her past. She finds herself naturally searching for an exit, no longer content with just existing alone in her old familiar environment (perhaps unconsciously preparing to move on).”
“Eventually, she finds an exit door that leads… well, somewhere else. Where the hell that is, I have no idea. Absolute death? A DMT fever dream in the final firework show of neurons in the brain? An afterlife? Who knows. I was excited to have an opportunity to use mixed media to help define the different layers of the limbo; the verses are shot below the now standard high definition on an old film camera (at a 4:3 aspect ratio) and the choruses were shot at 4k on a digital cinema camera with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The hope was that the old camera would help root the house limbo in a sort of faded nostalgic light, whereas the 4k cinema camera would communicate the clarity of the world waiting beyond her old life.”
The full weight of “Two Circles” comes to life in this video, whether or not we fully grasp every bit of the music or every nuance within its accompanying visual.
“Chris Cunningham, of Dark Details, did a phenomenal job of imagining a weird, compelling visual concept and putting together an amazing team to bring it to life. I love the new light that the video shines on the song,” Byland smiles. “It was fun to shoot some of the early scenes in our house before going to a large commercial studio on Harbor Island to shoot some of the cinematic scenes at the end.”
“There are a few meaningful objects included in the video. In several scenes, you see a pair of chatter teeth which is a nod to the ‘Two Circles’ single artwork. Another is the levitating, spinning chair. The chair was the design for multiple of our merch items and I’ve brought it with me on stage at multiple shows. It symbolizes taking the space to sit with emotions, which is a central theme in much of my music.”
You wear the same clothes
You tell the same jokes
You just got older
You just got older
Don’t make you wiser
You never grew up
You just got older
You just got older
Restless, vulnerable, and endlessly aching, “Two Circles” has no single meaning, moral, or takeaway; its ultimate beauty lies in its emotional volatility, and the smorgasbord of feelings that come to the surface as Byland build to each painful, passionate crescendo. What that climax means is forever up to interpretation; is it our own slow march toward the inevitable, our search for purpose in a meaningless world, or simply an exhausted cry into the darkness?
The answer is yes, and then some. Provocative and poignant, intimate and dramatic, “Two Circles” is a masterful three minutes of raw humanity. Stream Byland’s new music video exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stream the full album Heavy for a While, out now!
You wear the same clothes
You tell the same jokes
You just got older
You just got older
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Stream: “Two Circles” – Byland
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