Every Dog is a twenty-seven minute-long, highly-focused collection of sonic portraits, with each song offering uniquely immersive, richly-layered meditations on queer love, isolative depression, Western U.S. road trips, and singing through the pages of a personal journal. The album has proven to be a crucial creative and spiritual outlet for the artist, who says, "'Every Dog' highlights different growths I’ve experienced as a songwriter, in the efficacy of both more abstract-leaning and literal-leaning types of storytelling." Equipped with a renewed sense of self and newfound creative freedom, allie continues, "I felt freer to write about my own experiences and wherever else my imagination took me, worrying less about fitting in with other artist peers, and just wanting to make something that felt fair and real and true to my life in this vast and crazy world."
Seamlessly melding emotionally evocative lyricism with memorable and catchy pop-song formats, songwriter Allie Cuva has returned with Every Dog to showcase the work of an experienced young artist, driven toward songs with urgency, poise, and passion. The seven-song album feels like an easily-accessible portal of the personal. Producing and mixing the record herself, allie tactfully designed the recordings from beginning-to-end. The overall winning quality of this album is achieved through allie’s artistic vulnerability and willingness to share secrets with the audience, understanding that through such door-opening, an invitation for a powerful, cathartic and personal interpretive listening experience is made possible.
New York City proved to play a pivotal role in the album's story and creation and how allie relates to herself and the world around her. After relocating from Detroit and Nashville, the musician explains, "'Every Dog'” emerged as a bit of a montage-based glimpse into how moving to New York City has changed the way I’m able to interact with my surrounding environment. Having lived most of my life in suburban-type sprawls of Michigan and Tennessee, I’m not sure anything could have prepared me for the vibrancy or constancy of NYC."
The title track sweetly explores self-discovery–a harmonically nutritious meditation on the journeys of supporting an ex-lover and learning more about one’s self in the process. The track similarly holds New York City in its DNA. The artist says, "I understand “Every Dog” to be a somewhat abstract representation of my own journey and the journeys of my loved ones, especially artist friends, to find solace in such a trying, chaotic environment here in NYC."
It also explores ever-evolving interpersonal relationships, how distance from friends with time can be necessary, even if difficult and strange. Delving into the intimate subject matter, allie adds, "Looking back, I think the song “'Every Dog'” was a way for me to honor both the pain of necessary separation from beloved people who had once been very close to me, and also the sense of peace and acceptance I felt in knowing such decisions were made for the right reasons–out of love for the other and myself."
Recorded in Brooklyn with bandmates Alex Harwood (guitar), Maxwell Zikakis (bass/synth), and Patrick Freeman (drums), allie says much of the songwriting flowed from her subconscious. Sonically, allie tied the sounds to the feeling the song evokes, and continues, "I wanted to create something that felt flickering–the oscillating guitar can resemble the constantly churning transportation flowing through NYC–and that also evolved to deliver the listener somewhere different than expected, which was meant to represent big, structural change in a relationship."
Shot on the Long Island coastline in late autumn, the video, directed by bassist Zikakis, follows allie and her partner Caro, along with a family friend's dog, Älska. The artist shares, "The video feels quite impressionistic and open to interpretation. I love how the shots get progressively sillier over time. We hadn’t set out with any specific criteria in mind–our only goal was to explore the area and maybe document it. My favorite sequence is of what is presumably designed to appear as the dog and me looking out at each other across some great supposed body of water and perhaps time itself."
Last month, allie shared the album's lead single with "Radio Shower,"–an impressionistic, nylon-strung montage of aging, loss, and love that ponders the passage of time over gentle guitar plucks and soothing vocals. Inspired by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the track is written in alternative tuning and is sonically layered and textured with several instrumental parts. The artist repeatedly second guessed herself, re-recording vocals several times, and learned the benefits and risks that come with experimenting in the studio. "Before sending to master, I did at least 32 mix revisions, many of which featured big arrangement changes. I re-recorded vocals, then decided the original vocals had been better. A bunch of chasing my own tail. I learned a hugely important lesson from this song–which is that while studio experimentation can be great, I should never forget the original spirit, vision, and/or goal for the song’s recording."
Allie Cuva, who performs under the moniker allie, is a songwriter, producer, mix engineer, multi-instrumentalist and performer. She began writing music at the age of twelve in her hometown of Detroit, Michigan and later moved to Nashville to hone musical skillset and form her artistic identity. The artist then went on to tour extensively as the drummer for indie pop rocker Cavetown. The musician's 2021 debut LP Maybe Next Time garnered support from Brooklyn Vegan, Atwood Magazine, Our Culture Magazine and more. The LP was followed up by a 7-inch included on Saddle Creek's Document Series with "cast iron," produced by Ryan Hemsworth (Tinashe, Mitski) under Quarter-Life Crisis which FLOOD Magazine called "an affecting rumination on connection." With her forthcoming rich, vibrant indie-rock project, filled with purple gel-penned iridescent bedroom bangers, allie aims to queer a space so often dominated by men and hopes to genuinely connect listeners based on broad, relatable themes of humanity through a lesbian, trans, leftist lens.
"Every Dog," the contemplative, gentle track by allie, is out everywhere now. The responsibly sentimental second, self-produced album of the same name is due out September 27 and available to pre-order now.
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