Wryn - Shapes (Album) Preorder

PRE-ORDER for March 28 ship date.

Four years ago, Wryn’s world shifted. It rocked, it tumbled and it turned itself inside out as they looked inward, reassessed their trauma and began a new journey of self-discovery. What transpired was a moniker change to their last name, Wryn — a nod to their evolving sound but more pointedly their transformative relationship with gender. Wryn’s life began to embody a new shape. Their reinvention, in sound and spirit, became the ethos of their new album, aptly called Shapes.

On Shapes, Wryn found themself using music as a way to process their feelings of complex PTSD and trauma. “My music got better, more personal because I was able to look at myself more clearly and see myself as separate from my trauma. Once I could see myself separate I could see a lot,” they said. “It’s not just about gender. That’s just one of the things that came from this process.” 

With Shapes, Wryn can also see themselves and their work more clearly now. “There is work before this that was reflective of my experiences but not of myself,” they said. “I am now able to see under, through and past the causes of things.”

The origin of Shapes began just as the world was emerging from lockdown. In July 2021, Wryn had the urge to record a record and reached out to Bella Blasko (The National, Feist, Big Red Machine) to help them produce and mix the project. While timing wasn’t on their side in the past, Blasko was available since tours were largely in limbo. The pair largely worked remotely — only meeting physically midway through the process. Wryn also enlisted Grey Bear Erikson who engineered the album. Wryn did most of the recording playing guitar and singing live at the same time. 

When the world began opening up again, Wryn connected with drummer JT Bates (Bonny Light Horseman, Big Red Machine) & bassist/saxophonist Mike Lewis (Bon Iver) to add instrumentation. Over a year later, Blasko mixed the record and Heba Kadry mastered it. Through Blasko, Wryn met with Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records and signed to the label this year. 

“One of the creation themes technically that I have come back to is not rushing. Letting it take its time to get the people we wanted, to get the mix right, to get the person we wanted to master. It just needed its time,” they said.

To introduce Shapes, Wryn shared “Steady,” a stirring number penned during the pandemic in 2020 as they returned to therapy to untangle their past and were grappling with survival amid the chaos. The song serves as a sweeping hymnal — a prayer — to navigate that period of their life. “Being alive in this body is / Heavy, heavy/ Fill up my lungs and wish me to breathe / Steady, steady,” they sing with a syrupy lilt before slinking into a stunning crescendo of strings and harmonies. 

On “Snake,” Wryn channels the raspy intimacy of Sharon Van Etten as they process their righteous anger and the intense political and social upheaval of that period — specifically the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-trans legislation and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Holy water / Can’t save your daughters / Or wash your hands clean / And I can’t wait for answers / Before I get free,” Wryn sings. With “Multitudes,” they found inspiration in a prompt that featured Big Thief’s 2017 track “Pretty Things,” which turned into something akin to a love letter to themself. 

At the center of the record is its title track, “Shapes,” where Wryn recognizes they were fragmented before they embraced their gender identity. “Open me up / Open the flood / I’ve split myself in two / For too long,” they croon. Wryn tackles all-consuming loneliness on the somber folk cut “Coiled.” The album’s lush closer “Sticky” tackles the way that trauma has lingered in their body and haunted them in flashbacks: “Deep in my body / Deep in my womb / Memory lingers / That I cannot move.”

With their first album under their name Wryn, Shapes feels like a debut. And they hope listeners can find connection, process their own emotions and release them if need be. “My songs were always emotional, that never changed,” they said. “Now I’m confronting the roots of the emotions.”