Throughout all of Chura’s life changes, she stayed centred by writing songs, practicing piano and guitar, and exploring being newly single for the first time in years in a new city. The result is an album about the pursuit of love and all the insecurities, longing, and inevitable fucbois it entails. Across nine new songs, some version of love is always just out of her arm’s reach. Part of the rollercoaster of love is realizing that sometimes, you’re better off alone, and there is joy to be found in solitude.

Dancing Alone was recorded at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, Georgia with producer Robert Schneider of Apples in Stereo, who co-founded influential indie rock/pop collective Elephant 6. Along with Chura’s longtime drummer Ryan Clancy, the album also features contributions from engineers and session musicians David Barbe (Sugar) and Andy LeMaster (Now It’s Overhead). Elephant 6 alumni Scott Spillane (Neutral Milk Hotel) and John Fernandes (Olivia Tremor Control) appear on the song “Babydoll.” Meanwhile, first single “Danny” boasts guest spots by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills.

“I met someone who was traveling through New Orleans,” Chura says of “Danny.” “We had an instant rapport and an easy chemistry, and it reminded me what excitement could feel like. I wrote ‘Danny’ as an ode to the fantasy of meeting someone who could sweep me off my feet when I felt like I needed rescuing. He invited me to a party, but I stayed home and watched the clock tick instead. Afterwards I couldn’t stop imagining the version of myself who had gone, who had seized the moment.”

Ahead of Dancing Alone’s release, Northern Transmissions spoke with Chura about her changing creative standards, returning to Detroit, craving toxic love, and working with Robert Schneider.

Northern Transmissions: Was New Orleans a creative time for you?

Stef Chura: COVID happened, I didn’t have to work, I didn’t have to tour, I was just kind of posted up there, and I had a dating app and was single. [Laughs] I would have maybe felt embarrassed to do it in Detroit, but in a new place, I was like, “I guess I’ll see what this is all about.”

I did have unadulterated free time, which, to me, is the best time to be writing; I don’t do so good when things are planned. I didn’t think, “I’ll go to New Orleans and write an album,” but I did want to keep my chops up, and I like playing, so I was playing a lot. And when you’re just fucking around on the instrument, that’s when you write some stuff. It ended up being a really great time. I wrote probably 80% of [Dancing Alone] in this one year. It’s probably the freshest record I’ve written. The first record is always going to be like the greatest hits of every song you’ve ever written [up to that point]. And the second one was both, like 50/50 new songs.

NT: When promoting Midnight, you expressed doubts that you could live up to Messes. Did you have any self-doubts between Midnight and Dancing Alone? How have your creative standards for yourself changed over the years?

SC: They change with every album. Originally, I just threw myself into [music], so it’s been interesting choosing the people I’ve chosen to be involved over the years. Each album is like a time capsule. You just have to be okay with if it wasn’t exactly how you wanted it, it’s just how it is, and the next one, you take what you know and try to do a little better. You’re getting closer to what you want each time.

NT: How did you feel about returning to Detroit? Did going “home” feel like a step back, or was it comforting?

SC: I never lived anywhere but Michigan. All the touring I did, I did feel this pull to explore. I didn’t realize how intense it is to move. I spent my 20s in Detroit. Having a kid, I just learned a lot about what I wanted for my life. You’re a little more tethered [as a parent]. There’s no other place I’d rather be than here. I love the music scene and people here. I love where it is. I love that it’s still a pretty major city, so a lot of touring bands come through. That’s a quality I like in a city that I wasn’t aware of until I left. I feel very different being back because I’m very sure of what I want and like. I’m not curious anymore. [Laughs] I’m good. I got a good thing here. There’s so many different things going on here. There’s a lot of garage and punk going on, but there’s also a big techno and dance scene here that doesn’t exist anywhere in the same way.

NT: And Detroit’s also relatively close to Toronto if you ever want to pop up to Canada.

SC: Mhmm. If you ever want to leave America, the exit is like 15 minutes away. You can just leave.

NT: I can imagine there’s also something to be said for raising your child where you grew up and getting a little bit of what you had growing up as well.

I want to ask about the new album title. Why did the phrase, image, or concept of “dancing alone on the concrete” ultimately stick? I get the positive connotations of the word “alone” in the album title: personal comfort, self-affirmation, healthy solitude. What about “concrete?” How does that fit in?

SC: I wrote out the whole album’s lyrics, and I combed through them and picked out some phrases, but that one stood out. I don’t even know that there was anything that was close to it. As soon as I saw it, I was like, “That’s it.”

“The Concrete” is somewhat factual. I had been with someone, and we had written our names in wet cement, so it was a nostalgic memory happening in the song. As an album title, it has evoked some different meanings because they are the lyrics that will be focused on the most. They’re very appropriate even for the whole album.

NT: I thought of the idea of performing a joyous act under uncomfortable, even painful, conditions, which is really the condition of life. Writing your names together in concrete — tough memories can still sometimes be very joyful.

SC: I think the change the phrase has made for me is more like you were saying: the joy in loneliness. There is maybe a joyfulness to being with yourself. You’re dancing with yourself.

NT: And who knows your rhythms more than yourself?

SC: Yeah.

NT: Much of Dancing Alone is about the ways in which our need for love convinces us to betray ourselves just to keep the other person around. Is there ever a specific, consistent critical turning point where you know you have to step away?

SC: If you would have interviewed me when I was writing this album, I might have had a different answer, but growing up a little, you have to have these hard boundaries of what you’re okay with. Even on a few songs on this album, there’s this stain against my better intuition because I’m attached already. My advice is, “Don’t do that.” [Laughs].

NT: Which often sounds easier than done.

SC: Totally. Once you get in it, it’s sometimes hard to detach.

NT: Listening to “Lovesick,” one of the things I thought about is, why do you think some people crave toxic love? Boredom? Novelty? Something to break up their usual rhythm?

SC: Ruin my own life. [Laughs]

NT: Some people like that drama!

SC: I think that entirely has to do with your upbringing, your parents’ relationship and what was normalized for you as a kid. If you’re used to fighting in your home, you’re going to attract that. If you are finding yourself in a lot of toxic relationships, it’s something you need to unpack for yourself. “Why am I bringing myself all this drama?” or even just bringing yourself people who don’t like you?

NT: We did suggest that maybe some people just like to follow their impulses for something novel. I feel like there’s a kernel of that in “Danny,” where you imagine this version of yourself following the person who was passing through New Orleans to this random party. Is that someone you have been or someone you still aspire to be a little bit?

SC: No, I’m boring now. [Laughs] The song’s kind of a fantasy that I had about someone. That’s the least toxic-sounding song. It’s the least confused. It’s the most clear. Doing stuff like that is fun. I’m not necessarily against that. I probably haven’t had a lot of opportunities to be like that, so there was a certain amount of excitement in that moment.

NT: You mentioned in the past that Messes “really embodied a way of being for me. I just felt out of control at that time period. With [Midnight], it was collaborative in a certain way that it wasn’t so totally consuming of my emotions.” What did the making of Dancing Alone symbolize, entail, or encapsulate for you?

SC: I gained a lot of experience from those albums, so I didn’t feel so green this time (not saying I know much of anything at all). Because [Dancing Alone] was written in a certain block of time for the most part outside of “Leadweight” and “The Concrete” (the songs were all tightly written around the same time), the album’s a good snapshot of the era of my life when I was free and exploring and processing my emotions the best I could.

NT: Dancing Alone has some serious Elephant 6 ties. Have you always been a huge fan of E6?

SC: The Neutral Milk Hotel albums meant a lot to me as a teenager. Those were formative, formative, super important records to me. I like Apples [in Stereo], and I like of Montreal, but some of the deeper cut stuff I wasn’t as aware of until later. I met Robert through mutual friends, and that deepened my knowledge of it all. It was such a joy to get to go to Athens with him in that time. He’s truly the kindest, nicest person that I could have made the record with.

NT: Do you remember the first time you came across Elephant 6 or Neutral Milk Hotel?

SC: I lived in rural Michigan, and my friends were listening to Neutral Milk Hotel. We loved In the Aeroplane [Over the Sea]. We would all play it. We would all sing along to it. The first time I encountered it, it was probably a burned CD. [Laughs]

NT: What was working with Robert [Schneider] like?

SC: He doesn’t produce records anymore. I think I randomly was like, “Will you do mine?” and he was like, “Yes.” He teaches theoretical math. In the middle of [making] the album, he was teaching at the University of Georgia in Athens, then he moved to Michigan. He’s in northern Michigan, at Michigan Tech, in the middle of nowhere. But he came out of retirement, and [Dancing Alone] is the fruits of that. He’s hyper intelligent. He’s also a magical, good energy kind of guy. He’s very creative. The way he thinks about arrangements, it’s cool. There were a lot of little text messages where he’s like, “Okay, it’s like this: *hums melody* But I think the bass should be like this: bap-bap-bap! Dut-dut-dut!”

NT: They’re all stems worth holding onto.

SC: I know. I need to find them and take little screenshots.

Order Dancing Alone On The Concrete by Stef Chura HERE