Juanita Stein - The Weightless Hour (2024)

Noise felt safe, noise felt important – and for a long time, Juanita Stein surrendered to it. It took two decades of hard-earned wisdom, both from the radical act of leading Howling Bells and the baptism of fire that followed when she created alone, to learn that silence is louder. Stein’s fourth solo endeavour, The Weightless Hour, is an intensely human document with a profound sense of dignity. It’s the kind of record which is armed with experience and yet is all the lighter for it, where your attention isn’t demanded and yet effortlessly claimed. There is strength, she has discovered, in restraint.

With The Weightless Hour, every sound, every choice, has earned its place. Stein joined forces once more with long-time collaborator, the producer Ben Hillier, whose direction can be felt in the works of Depeche Mode, Doves, Blur and Elbow. After originally collaborating with Stein to shepherd Snapshot (2020) into being, her third record built from collected fragments of grief following the loss of her father, it was Hillier’s penchant for minimalism – his instinct for risk-taking while stripping sounds back to their gleaming bones – that she felt was aligned with her vision for her fourth project. As a young woman, Stein would never have dreamed of suggesting that her name be included on the production credits for her albums, despite feeling she’d co-produced many of the albums she had written. Hillier, however, didn’t hesitate to acknowledge her – a testament to their mutual respect and creative alliance.

Through these converging chapters of her life, The Weightless Hour feels like an arrival for Juanita Stein: “I’ve finally learned to be okay in space and be loud in my experiences.”