Wendy Eisenberg, the acclaimed guitarist known for their dazzlingly knotty musicianship and collaborations with artists like Bill Orcutt, has released what they describe as their most surprising album yet. The self-titled record is a startlingly beautiful reflection of love and self-acceptance, marking a departure from their earlier experimental work.
The album was born from a moment of crisis on 30 December 2023, when Eisenberg, after a night of anxiety at a rave in Bushwick, embarked on a day-long walk through Brooklyn. 'I felt like I needed to reauthor myself,' they recall. A chance encounter with an old friend led to the diagnosis: 'She told me: “You seem like you’re having a kind of exorcism.” Then she added: “Maybe just play some guitar?”' Eisenberg went home and began writing the songs that would become the album, many composed in a dreamlike state over three to four months.
The album leans away from Eisenberg's earlier experimentalism, drawing instead from the playfulness and graceful melody of 1970s folk-rock and singer-songwriter albums. The orchestration, by their partner and co-producer Mari Rubio (AKA More Eaze), foregrounds beauty with a gracefulness that contrasts with Eisenberg's knotty previous records. 'The harmonic vocabulary of these songs reflects my newfound sense of comfort and happiness,' says Eisenberg. 'Self-acceptance is not a simple process, and that is reflected in the formal complexity of this record.'
The exorcism their friend intuited related to a breakup that rattled Eisenberg's identity. 'I’d dated women before; I’d dated all genders. But some part of me always wanted to impress something normative – like, I can be this much of a freak, and also maintain some fealty to “straightness”,' they explain. With this breakup, Eisenberg realised they 'could not make it work with any man. It was a revelatory moment that involved me embracing my queerness, my nonbinariness, my lesbianity.'
Music has always been Eisenberg's escape route. They first picked up their mother's guitar at age 11, growing up outside Washington DC. After learning standard rock fare, they joined a band playing Sum 41-related material, then started writing for another band, Igos. Their path has since zigzagged between confessional folk song and ecstatic improv, with regular collaborator Bill Orcutt calling Eisenberg 'an amazing player who improves everything they’re added to, like musical MSG.'
