Name: Try Harder
Brand: Aerial East

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

PTKF2179-1

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Colour

Gold

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: Yes

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2021-02-19

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Redeye

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

720841217916

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: Yes / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / gold

Artist

Aerial East

Genre US

Rock-Pop

Label US

Partisan Records

Aerial East’s music explores the space between the conscious and unconscious mind, between what was and what will be. She dives into what she has known - adolescence, heartbreak, coming into a new social consciousness, and managing a perpetual unanchored-ness - in order to find a most surprising place to rest inside: the unknowable.

As the daughter of a military family, East spent her late childhood in Europe and teenage years in Abilene, Texas. After dropping out of community college, she moved to New York City where she’d meet a group of musicians whom she would come to befriend and collaborate with (including Okay Kaya, Kelsey Lu, Wet and more). She hopes to tell stories we don’t hear often. “I want to tell stories about people in Texas,” she says, “I want to humanize different characters.”

<i>Try Harder </i>is a tight yet eclectic record, both sonically and emotionally. “I didn’t want to hear any drums,” East says. “I was going through a period of high anxiety,” she explains, adding that she listened to a lot of solo-piano to calm down during moments of ungroundedness. “I wanted to make a record to be soothing in the same way [as the piano was for her].” So, much to the initial skepticism of her collaborators, East decided against adding drums to her songs. “I just wanted it to be healing and calm, something you can listen to even if the world is ending,” a feeling we can all relate to. The end result is a beautiful ode to those of us who feel like life sometimes is a little bit harder, that we don’t quite fit in, that our edges are rough – an album-length anthem for sitting in our own discomfort and groundlessness and finding a specific peace with it. 

Try Harder

Music US

Buy Aerial East - Try Harder (Vinyl, CD) now from Rough Trade - independent purveyors of great music, since 1976.