Debut Album Ex:Re – The Solo Recordings of Elena Tonra
Vinyl + CD Released 1st February
Ahead of the vinyl and CD release of Ex:Re, the debut album from Elena Tonra’s eponymous solo project, the Daughter lyricist, vocalist and guitarist has shared stunning visuals for the single ‘The Dazzler’.
Directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (creators of Daughter’s triptych of videos for their second record Not To Disappear), the video imagines ‘The Dazzler’ as the hotel depicted in Tonra’s lyrics and places the magnificent British actress Maxine Peake languishing alone in one of its rooms (with cameo appearances from Tonra and Ex:Re collaborator Fabian Prynn).
Talking about the video, Iain and Jane explain, “Elena told us The Dazzler was a real place, but we wanted to transform it into a hotel of the mind. That lost, sedated limbo you get stuck in when you can’t get over your last relationship. With a colour palette borrowed from Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, our hotel room becomes a kaleidoscopic vision of a world stuck in an endless loop. Swimming in regret and drowning in thick alcohol.
Elena appears in the video filtered through the ubiquitous hotel television. This isn’t the first time we’ve boxed a ghostly Elena inside a screen. This idea is a gentle but knowing nod back to the first ever Daughter video, which we directed in 2013. It’s still a real treat to be providing a visual accompaniment to Elena’s dazzling words and music.”
Running parallel to Daughter, Tonra has assumed the pseudonym Ex:Re (pronounced ex-ray) for her eponymously-titled debut solo album, a deeply personal record that was made with both a sense of urgency and a cathartic need.
Tonra’s candid solo songs document the time after a relationship ended and are written like unsent letters. Taking on a creative moniker, she chose Ex:Re to mean ‘regarding ex’ and also ‘X-Ray’ as a way to look inside and see what is really there. Writing took a year but the recording process lasted mere months, turning to Fabian Prynn (4AD’s in-house engineer and producer) and composer Josephine Stephenson on cello to help bring Ex:Re to life.
Ex:Re Ex:Re
Where The Time Went
Crushing
New York
Romance
The Dazzler
Too Sad
Liar
I Can’t Keep You
5AM
My Heart
