The Belle Curves - Subject To Change (2024) [Hi-Res]

Liner Notes:

“Sister, tell me your secret
what are you holding back?
I am right here,
waiting for you to share.
But you’re not willing to,
yeah, there’s something more to you.”

We break up on a cool August day in the parking lot of an Ocean State Job Lot in the Private Ocean of the same Pontiac Vibe within which we once crossed the Rio Grande. There’s a telos to this moment, something in the inception of all of our moments that always seemed to gesture here. As we talk, I’m overcome with the cool sureness of revelation, the ambiguity of lies told to each other and especially to ourselves dissolving away, replaced here by the soft condensation of a new and primal love.

When the work is working it’s always ahead of us, I tell Delaney as we listen again to Subject to Change on our way home in the car. This is to say that our words, when pressed through poetics or photography or music, inevitably speak to truths that run deeper and futures that spread further if we allow the work to channel the spirits. This is why good music can so often feel divinatory, like looking through the twisted globe of a crystal ball at the warped impression of a lover to come. Good work, however, is never so much a prophecy as it is an exorcism. These and other truths are written all over this album, with such profound tenderness and love.

Subject to Change is the product of many transitions. Transitions from the center of civilization to the outskirts of everything, as in Life in the Hinterlands. Transitions into and out of toxic friendships, as in Hand-me-downs. Transitions to new cities and new lifestyles, as in the flirtatious toning of Topo Chico. Transitions into new identities, as is the case with my own gender transition detailed with care in The Process, and transitions into more honest dialogues, as in the delicate placement of the album's Last Song. Above all Subject to Change is a document ahead of its time in all of the best ways, an honest and sincere call to authenticity, to joy, and to truth, despite the occasional and inevitable pain that truth brings.

I am grateful for this work, the product of a difficult time for its composer Delaney, and I am grateful for all of those who made it happen. Grateful most of all to her for her compassion, kindness, humor and irreverence. Life is chaotic and unpredictable, and when we become rigid, convince ourselves to live lives we are not meant to live, then we set ourselves up to break. Here, The Belle Curves model for us the flexibility, growth, and the self-assured confidence that is necessary if we, as listeners, are to keep dancing. Listen to it and take on its lessons. Tell the truth, be honest, and flirt. Buy your time or make it whole cloth. Embrace the muddy shores and love as many people as you can. This is The Belle Curves, always and inevitably Subject to Change.

“Sister Tell me the truth.
I can’t live without you.
You’ve always been here,
Hiding how you care,
but I was hiding too.
Hiding what I knew”

- Kelsey Sucena -