After two years hidden in a remote countryside studio, Lila Tristram, musician, fiction writer, artist and teacher based in East London, opens a new chapter.
Having spent four years crafting a name for herself with her atmospheric, bucolic folk releases (Our Friends pt. I & II were released in 2020; Black and White Memories Ignited by the Scent of Springtime Explode in Colour -a collaborative project with The Last Dinosaur’s Jamie Cameron- was released on December 2022; the EP home was released in May 2023) she put together a 5-piece band and emerged with an elegiac indie-rock record, described by Annie Needham as “a masterpiece.”
The first single from the album, Sounds Like Easter, will be available on all major streaming platforms tomorrow, 9th May 2024, but we have the honour and opportunity to have it on TRISTE© as an exclusive premiere.

Sounds Like Easter is an intense and brooding song about love and loss. With heavy guitars and atmospheric synths, the song steadily builds into an epic finale; a bearing of desperate, yearning love in a devastating and passionate performance. Echoes of Lila’s past releases, Our Friends and home filter into the listening experience, with deeply romantic lyrics sung so softly and intimately, that you can hear the gentle wavering in her voice. “We dance like you’ll never go / we twist into perfect flow”.

Gentle choir-esk harmonies cut through the stillness, with just the brooding bass and subtle drums giving away a sense of what’s to come. Yet as Sounds Like Easter reaches its climax, the song takes a turn. In a bold and endlessly brave expression of emotion, Lila repeats the line “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you”, each time getting louder and growing in intensity, until her voice can barely take it, and she erupts into a scream.
The band takes over; a cloud of passion and energy.
Anyone who has ever been madly in love will relate to the kind of rage-inducing desperation it can evoke, and none expresses it so well as Lila Tristram in this song.

The band is an impressive line-up of musicians. Heledd Owen (Prima Queen, Adwaith) on drums; Tim Gardner (RY X) on synth; Ailsa Tully (Dalliance Rec.) on bass; and Jack Handyside, classical guitarist known for writing Bach inspired jazz, on lead electric guitar. The record was mixed by Gus White (Madeline Ashman, Edward Cross) and mastered by Tim Debney (Sufjan Stevens, Thom Yorke).

Sounds Like Easter will be out tomorrow, May 9th. Look HERE for more information on Lila Tristram.