Most people experience music as an outlet- a way to reach into the crowd, to feel seen, to find connection. In her recently released debut album ‘Heavenly Bodies’, instead turns the lens inward. Written between Glasgow, London, and Brighton, the album sits between a confession, a love letter, and a tear-stained journal page. Alex Amor digs deep into her emotional landscape, unearthing her grief, anger, and heartbreak for all to see, eventually finding solace and healing in letting go.
The Scottish singer-songwriter talks to CLASH mere days after the album release and her appearance at alongside , , and . Excitement and adrenaline twinkle in Alex’s eyes, alongside the fairy lights hung up high above our heads.“It’s been quite a crazy week. Today I went on a two hour walk in Stammer Park. I didn’t have my earphones in, I put my phone on airplane mode, and I just walked and tried to process the past couple days. So I feel only today it’s really sinking in.”
Having space to think and sit in silence is a crucial element to Amor’s day-to-day, and especially to her writing practice, which is for her a pathway to self-discovery.“I experience life very intensely, and in order to cope I have to go to therapy, I have to write, I have to process. So a lot of my writing is processing how I’m feeling and trying to get to this other side, to this understanding. Sometimes I don’t really know why I’m writing or what I’m writing about before I get to the end”.
Music and songwriting is almost a form of meditation for Amor, a way to connect her inner world to the outer. “I’ve always been a very spiritual person. I truly believe once you connect to a source higher than yourself (whatever you might call it), your life starts changing. That’s what happened to me when I started doing meditation: my internal life changed and then therefore my external life changed. The album opener, ‘As Above So Below’, touches on how there’s patterns throughout the universe, and how they happen on the micro and the macro scale. Once I realised that, and I stopped resisting what was going on outside of myself, my life began to flow a lot better”.
This practice is heavily influenced by the esoteric painter Hilma af Klimt – whom Amor deeply admires. “When I first saw her paintings, I just felt this really intense strong pull towards her. Her paintings were the start of a whole movement of abstract painting. She would go against the popular artistic style of her time, and used painting as divination”.In similar fashion, Amor’s writing is infused with cosmic references, meditations on the natural world, and our inexplicable alignment with the universe. Songs like ‘Seeing Angels’ or ‘Aquamarine’ have a tangible, sensory quality to them, a calmness that’s reminiscent of a quiet forest, or a deserted beach in the early hours of the morning.
There is also a darker side to Alex’s songwriting, a deep longing, a mourning. How she had to say goodbye / Like an eagle she was born to fly / So just look up at the sky / Like the moon, she was born to shine, sings Amor in ‘Meet On The Moon’. ‘Heavenly Bodies’ emerges from Amor’s grief, from the loss that she endured, and still grapples with. Through this album, the artist tries not only to reach some sort of peace with her grief, but also to honour the people that have left so soon. Music becomes a lifeline, a light in the darkest of times.
With this album, Amor clearly defines her creative vision and polishes her sound. Clear vocals float untethered over a layered soundscape; flutes, guitars, and synths chatter in perfectly timeless harmony. “This was the first time that I had no one in my ear telling me what to do, and I could just make whatever I wanted to make. We got live drums and live instrumentation on basically every track, the sound is very organic. In a way, I’ve gone back to the style of writing I would use when I first started to write music, when I was a teenager and it was all super dramatic. It’s kinda funny how I’ve gone back to that”.
There is a certain circularity to Amor’s philosophy. Songs like ‘This Must Be The End’ and ‘Only The Beginning’ refer to the invisible pattern that we find ourselves in, each of us trying to navigate it in our own way. Alex herself recognises how accepting this force, letting it guide us, sometimes is the best thing to do. “I initially studied textile design but I just felt this unmistakable calling to pursue music and see where it would take me. I thought I don’t pursue this thing, I’m gonna regret it for the rest of my life. I just needed to trust the unknown, and it’s gotten me somewhere”.
If life is made of endings and beginnings, we can certainly say this is an exciting beginning for Amor, a debut album that’s confident, distinct, and a complex exploration of the human experience. The soaring heights of love, the depths of sorrow, and the comfort of sunshine on bare skin.
‘Heavenly Bodies’ is out now.