Avalon Emerson looks back at her past through a sharp lens. She doesn’t view it entirely with rose-colored glasses. Dual forces come to mind like day and night, life and death, or stars and planets. But, what happens after she experiences the reality of gaining and losing the better parts of being with someone? Written into Changes by Avalon Emerson & The Charm, released March 20 via Dead Oceans, is a tasteful effort to answer it.

As Avalon Emerson & The Charm, she takes a break from her solo DJ and electronic music producer work to team up with her band project, one putting a unique spin on dream pop and synth rock. Following their debut album in 2023, Written into Changes experiments more often while pulling in new thematic directions, with the idea of time coming and passing dotted throughout.

The dual forces Avalon Emerson & The Charm navigates reveal themselves within contemplative lyricism. On “Eden,” uplifting bass lines and embellished vocals frame the push and pull of longing, especially “When my moonlight is my dayjob / And my daylight is my nightsong.” Later, “Happy Birthday” wrestles with the feeling of being caught between the stages of life with “Too young to die / Too old to break through.”

“Jupiter and Mars” is one of the singles besides “Eden” that offers the closest thing to acceptance. Avalon Emerson echoes “Nothing gained is nothing lost.” Then, “God Damn (Finito)” leaves the question open entirely: “I don’t know where it started / And I can’t see the end.” However, growth and decay occupy the same image with “Flowers for you / Dying just to bloom.” Written into Changes sits with its contradictions, and that restraint is one of its honest qualities.

Avalon Emerson & The Charm never quite answers what happens after you gain and lose the better parts of being with someone. Yet, closer “Earth Alive” comes the nearest to it, opening with “They say find what you love and let it kill you” before landing in “Goodbye my love / Haven’t you run enough.” Hope is still alive to Avalon Emerson, and the cyclical structure has a more assured sound both lyrically and melodically, a quiet and fierce resolution to Written into Changes.

Order Written Into Changes by Avalon Emerson & the Charm HERE