Heather Maloney, High Tea

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Carly Rae Brunault

Heather Maloney and a projected flower.

Heather Maloney

$20 ($16 adv.)

media release: Exploding Star was never intended to be released. Written after the death of her father, the songs were the most vulnerable body of work ever created by Heather Maloney- meant and written only for her. The idea of releasing and then promoting an album went against her instincts to keep this art near and dear. Luckily for us, her closest friends and family convinced her otherwise. 

Maloney was able to track for 2 days in her childhood home- recording songs, backing vocals, the crickets in the yard and even percussion played directly on the walls and floors of the house itself. The result is raw and exquisitely personal. “That house is the backdrop to so many moments with my father that became song lyrics on the record, so having *the house itself* be a part of a few songs was such a beautiful and intense experience for me,” Maloney reflects. “I will never forget what it felt like to return to the place those memories were made, and sing them with such grief and gratitude. At times I felt that my dad was still somewhere in the house, and I was singing directly to him. At other times it felt like I was surrounded by all of our young and distant ghosts.”

 Maloney played her father’s guitar and also played a Yamaha keyboard that she had since she was a child. Maloney’s beloved tour mates and collaborators, Isabella DeHerdt and Isaac Eliot’s velvety harmonies and arrangements encourage the songs to blossom. Maloney writes, “From the start, Isabella and Isaac’s harmonies and arrangements felt like such supportive, lush and beautiful landscapes for the most vulnerable songs I’ve ever written to step into, and grow within. They created a truly safe space when it counted most, musically and personally. I will never forget all the ways that they held grief with me, on stage, in the studio, and in our friendship. These songs are infinitely better because of what they poured into them.”  

Exploding Star is a collection of twelve songs urgently written at the time to help ease the “greatest heartbreak” of Maloney’s life but are thankfully and transcendentally now ours as well.

But here’s another thing I’ve since found to be true about grief: it changes you. You don’t just lose someone you held dear, you also lose yourself. You lose who you were before they died, and the world as you knew it - with them in it. It takes time to get to know yourself again. It took nearly a year for me to even begin to find words & chords that came anywhere close to capturing the new (and very big) feelings that happen when someone you love is so, incredibly, gone.   - Heather

  "Heather Maloney infuses her delicate folk with an amber glow that warms every moment of Exploding Star." - The Boston Globe

                                                             "[a] powerful piece of art.. boasts some of Maloney’s most poetic writing." - WBUR (NPR BOSTON)

"There are many grand works about the unfairness of life taken, the unknowingness of what, if anything, happens next, and the purpose of it all…

 Heather Maloney’s latest release, Exploding Star, suggests the benefits of empathy and mourning when one is not bereaved. 

Sadness can bring us joy.” -PopMatters Pick [8/10]