Sari Lightman - The Way I Saw You (2026) [Hi-Res]

With her solo debut, Lightman sheds the experimental suit to follow in the tradition of the folk troubadours: Leonard Cohen, Bridget St John, John Prine. “These songs are my attempt to draw a silhouette — a figure of a person that feels momentary and intimate.; a casual slice of life that my favorite songs are drawn from.”

Lightman’s full-length solo debut, The Way I Saw You, is out June 26, 2026 via Night Bloom Records. Lightman’s close friend Meg Duffy (Hand Habits, Perfume Genius) was a guiding force behind The Way I Saw You. The pair would walk in their shared Los Angeles neighborhood, talking and watching: people, wilderness, sunsets and suburbia. Duffy became a crucial collaborator, engineering, producing, and adding their transcendently lyrical guitar to each track.

A stable of additional peers fleshed out the record. Bassist Pat Kelly (Perfume Genius, St Vincent); Synthesist Aaron Otheim (Mega Bog); percussionist Jesse Quebbeman-Turley (Buck Meek, Cherry Glazer); and drummer Evan Cartwright (Cola, U.S. Girls) contributed to the sessions. The album was mixed by Philip Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Florist), who drew out an earthy sonic quality.

The album’s title track sees a journalist sitting across from the writer Eve Babitz, decades into Babitz’s reclusive period after an accident left her disfigured. She yearns to be remembered as for the way she was in her writing - sensual and carefree. To live in the rose, immortal, blossoming inside a body of work. “The Prize” portrays two lovers reincarnated as an agile butterfly and the pavement beneath her wings. “Day of the Just Cause” explores the biblical bond Lightman shares with her twin, while “Girl Bitten By A Lizard” is an ode to her sister-in-law, lost to addiction. “Give It All Up” imagines a posthumous conversation between two female mystics, Etty Hillseum and Jeanine Deckers.

The way I saw you is written almost entirely from the land of women: friends, family, imagined posthumous encounters.“I think of my songwriting as a type of voyeurism” Lightman muses. The album art speaks to this in an epic Big Foot reimagining - of capturing the essence of someone while hiding in close range. Like the feminine Big Foot, the album is a portrayal of the sensualist in her obscene and nuanced forms - not just some passive pretty muse, but a beast; a complex, compelling sum.

As the nylon strings warble and pitch, Lightman lends an intricate sketch to these characters, shifting truths and contradictions. The Way I Saw You warps introspective musings, baked in the California heat.