PREMIERE | Get Lost Cassidy Frost, 'Live In Private'
Peering deep into the auspices of the creative processes with Cassidy Frost; press photo courtesy of the artist.
As we reckon with a world that wildly spins according to its own complicated reasons and rationales, we engage with our own negotiations of the interior in relationship to the exterior. We work through how we feel about all the things that extend beyond the reaches of our immediate control. We think globally, we act locally, and at times our efforts feel futile like a faint whisper among the murmurs of many within a crowded and bustling planet. We wonder what our feelings mean to those we find connections with in life, how the intersections of our emotions fuse together in an alchemy of hearts and spirits finding one another across a busy plane of myriad existences and stories in progress that surround us. With the backdrop of a bewildering sequence of societies whose happenings litter the social media feeds and headlines of what legacy media establishments remain amid buyouts, mergers, and all the movements that make up the mega conglomerates that seem larger than the celestial bodies that populate the infinite skies high up above us. As the tumult and clamor clutters our exhausted consciousnesses, we seek the places to record the testimonials of our hearts and souls even though at times it feels like a fool’s errand to contribute to a chorus of voices in an indifferent earth that is consumed with the nonstop three ring circuses of scandals, calamities, calumny, tomes of division, and everything else that serves as sponsored content advertisement diversions from anything and everything that is truly relevant to us, and our lives.
Presenting a succinct collection of songs that were, according to the artist all written on cold nights for lost loves — San Francisco based tunesmith, media mover, producer, visionary, Get Lost Cassidy Frost presents the intimate expressions that make up Live in Private released through Seattle imprint Puzz Records. The awaited debut solo album from the artist, Cassidy delivers an assortment of songs that were recorded in one take where their inception and articulation were all created in real time. Following up some of our favorite tunes from 2024, Cassidy Frost continues to make music that speaks to the parts of the self that are the most guarded. Ultra visceral vignettes that sting like the abandoned love letters that remain unsent, the feelings that stir us in ways that words by themselves cannot fully convey, the people who capture the whole of our attention, how we process love, how we process the ones that got away, the ways in which love stirs us, surprises us, the memories made, the memories forgotten, and all the memories that have yet to be made.
Live in Private offers a privy view into the cozy and humble home recorded aura that is the hallmark and stylistic signature of Get Lost Cassidy Frost. "Pop Pop Pop" wrestles with the romanticism and infatuation scored like a dearly beloved record played to the point of obsession everywhere, during all times of the day, and loud late at night. Cassidy connects the constellations that dot the orbit between planets, galaxies, and all the sectors of the outer reaches that parallel the way in which we become enamored by one another, and the music that is shared between star-crossed lovers. "In the River" strikes square in the heart, a meditation on the tributaries that intersect into one another and diverge according to the paths of their flowing water rapids. "River" gently drifts like a pensive paean postulated at the water's edge, exhibiting restless thoughts and unanswered questions of unrequited connections that float like lonely innertubes without anyone in them, drifting along the trickling creeks and solemn brooks of the soul.
Notions of safeguarding the gates of the heart ring with tinges of learned wisdom from hard life lessons on "Love is a Plague" that explores the values and pratfalls of vulnerability to opening up the most protected aspects of ourselves and the human spirit to another. Understanding the intricacies of the self and heart is a motif found throughout Live in Private, as "Record Pops" draws upon the past and present with questions of how to tend to the flames that ignite the whole of our being in the most beguiling and mysterious of ways. "Not the Gold" carries the sentiments of "Pops" forward that seeks something better than the mistakes of human error that seeks brighter situations and grapples with the the cycles of making up and breaking up that define the stories of the greatest doomed relationships.
These hymns of relentless heartbreak arrives at the finale "I Love You Goodbye" that brings everything back home to further underscore the yin and yang of the human experience of love and loss. Get Lost Cassidy Frost in six songs shows us what it means to be loved. What it means to find love. What it means to find yourself stuck in the past. What it means to move beyond the past and live in the present. What it means when even the most magnificent love stories we have ever known fall apart. What it means to say goodbye to someone we love. What it means to live with the feelings that remain once a chapter (or chapters) have been closed and we embark upon a new era of new paradigms and new possibilities.
Get Lost Cassidy Frost creates music about finding ourselves amid the minefields of dating, the trajectories of relationships, situationships, the mythmaking that our minds conjure up, and how those become the overarching legends that become lithified like ancient statues erected as testament to Greco-Roman-esque mythologies. Live in Private is about living in the heart, the dweller from within the multitudes of the human spirit, the expressions that our unconscious paints about ourselves, those we love, the ones we lose, and the impact and indelible impressions we and others make on our respective consciousnesses within the collectives and communities of the humanity that we together share within our networks of global villages.
Cassidy Frost provided reflective insights on the creative, personal and spiritual process of capturing keen live takes that distill thought and sentiment into impactful vignettes:
It's usually easy for me to tell when a song is going to happen. It's like an internal toaster dings and then it's my job to sit down and let it come out. If I try to sit down and write on my own schedule, I won't get more than a line or two out. When songs do happen, they almost always come out fully formed, so I usually record the process of writing and then have these sweet little slices of time where a song is being born. For this tape, I wanted to share some of my favorite birth videos, songs that arrived so pretty that I've never been able to re-record any of them.
All over the record, truly live things are happening. A split second pause before a new chord is introduced, or a slight stumbling as a lyric surprises me. On one of the tracks, you can hear me start to well up as the final lyrics of the song form. There are drawbacks to writing in this way. It's always been hard for me to write second verses because it requires more intentional development of the story. I don't think I've ever successfully written a bridge (thank god for guitar solos).
One nice thing is that the tracks are about as close as a recording can be to the pure emotion of the songs they showcase. There is no remembering or getting back into the energy of the songs on this record. There was no rehearsal. They were recorded for private purposes only, to keep to myself or maybe to send to someone I was in love with. These recordings mean a lot to me and I was unsure for a long time what to do with them. But ultimately, putting them out on tape on a Seattle punk label seemed right.
Get Lost Cassidy Frost’s Live in Private is available now via Puzz Records.