Weather has always figured into the creative mix for Alexa Rose. On “Wild Peppermint,” from 2021’s quietly moving Headwaters, the Virginia-raised singer/songwriter nails the sleepless anticipation and ultimate letdown of a potential snow day before artfully equating fickle storm patterns with our own unpredictable lives. She continues that theme on the new Atmosphere (First City Artists), devoting an entire album to weather’s remarkable utility as a fitting analogy for the stark contradictions of daily life.
Ironically, Atmosphere was tracked at Betty’s, Sylvan Esso’s Chapel Hill, N.C., studio, shortly before Hurricane Helene inundated the western part of the state. Rose spent the following winter re-assessing and re-recording parts of the album in her cabin outside Asheville, toning down its more “produced” qualities to more accurately reflect her post-Helene malaise at the time. While Atmosphere may lack the studio polish of Headwaters, Rose hasn’t missed a beat, continuing her mastery of nuance and melody. Atmosphere feels as right as rain, its subtle emotional dynamic amplified by precise everyday details—all helped along by Rose’s most achingly resonant vocal performances to date.
Like a storm tracker with a heart of gold, Rose guides us through Atmosphere song by song.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Atmosphere”
“Every track on this record seems to have its long, lost twin. One falls in love while the other falls out. One relaxes into an ordinary day while one grieves what’s forever altered. One is settled into the memory of an old mountain homestead, and one barrels down a highway, restless and unrooted. Eventually they meet—estranged but undeniably related. ‘Atmosphere’ is the sky above all these scenes, heavy yet weightless at the same time. When I set out to make this record, I wanted it to feel like a gradient of a storm, like having the clouds move through you. My hope was that this song would serve as the beginning of that—a shift in the air pressure, a few pleasurable drops of rain while the sun still generously warms your shoulders.”
2) “Anywhere, OH”
“This is a song about the way it feels to be constantly traveling and fall in love with all the places you go. It was inspired by a town in Ohio where I stopped to get a cup of coffee on tour. I was only there for half an hour passing through, but I felt homesick when I left. It was a rainy day in October, and I remember the way the colors of houses and old oaks poked out from the fog. Driving out of town I passed a line of kids dressed up for Halloween, waiting to go into some church party.
“You end up in the most random places sometimes when you’re on tour. And in those non-tourist towns, I think people just assume you’re local. There’s a bittersweetness in that—ordering a cup of coffee and making small talk with the person behind the counter, who assumes you know about whatever big local news is going on. You just nod along, knowing you’ll likely never stop there again.”
3) “Lilacs”
“A love letter to an Appalachian backroad that winds through the hills of Alleghany County, Va. There’s an old black-and-white photo of my grandmother as a girl along this road, holding a pint glass of milk in her hand, dirt on her knees. I pass by the old farmland, a place called Rich Patch, when I drive home to see my folks in Virginia. The farm and all the land were sold long before I was born. But in the springtime, when the lilacs are in bloom, I imagine my great-great grandmother planting them. Did you know lilacs can live for more than a hundred years? They’re the ultimate harbingers of sweeter, warmer days, with their heavy, perfumed blossoms. I always cut a few and place them in a mason jar. I think it’s so lovely that you can plant something that can long outlive you, and I wonder if that very thought ever crossed my great-great grandmother’s mind as she clipped blossoms for her own bedside table a hundred years ago.”
4) “Storms”
“The strangest sky I ever saw was in the Midwest before a summer thunderstorm. A swirly yellow green with ominous black clouds, like a human bruise, the sun still shining through it all. I was thinking about how strange it is that people chase storms and are drawn to the way the sky looks in moments that are actually dangerous to us—the saturated colors and opposing textures. This song is about wanting someone who’s guarded to feel safe, to open up—and how the storms of who we are draw us into one another and help us feel safer. We recorded ‘Storms’ completely live, everyone together in the same room, accepting whatever little imperfections came along with the take. There’s a lot of trust in that, and I feel it when I listen to the recording.”
5) “Promising What”
“This is a song about wanting desperately to find joy again, knowing it exists but not being able to find it for the life of you. A little like a bug in your ear, you can hear it faintly—but when you reach out to grab it, it’s disappeared. It’s also a song about being at odds with what you used to believe. In this case, the idea that there’s this great mythological love out there that really lasts forever, that hangs on the wind after we’re gone. After having my heart broken so much, when I wrote this song, I was just fighting to keep on believing it even exists.”
6) “Where The Magic Lives”
“This song is about fighting to find enchantment again and making peace with the time that feels lost. I was thinking a lot about growing up in the early aughts, before I always had a phone in my pocket—and how I felt a curiosity about the world that couldn’t be answered with a quick Google search. Sometimes, I think leaving a little mystery is what we need to be able to run toward those dreams, to let ourselves bask in a question before we know the answer.”
7) “Arms”
“When I wrote this song, I was thinking about how this epidemic of gun violence in America disproportionately affects children, the ones who have the most untarnished ability to believe in magic. There’s this recurring narrative in many children’s movies where love can bring someone back, often through the mourner’s tears falling onto the person. I met a songwriter once who said that writing a song could make you feel like you’ve had some kind of say—or power—in a situation that’s totally out of your control. I think I was trying to imagine a fantastical, happy ending to the worst thing I can imagine—but not in a way that’s real or practical. More so in a way that a child might imagine it.”
8) “Costumes”
“When I was 29, I moved back into my childhood home in Virginia. The house had been abandoned for the better part of a decade, the streetlight at the end of the road burnt out. I’d lie awake at night and drift into a sleepless existential crisis—on the cusp of my 30s, staring at the wall where a life-size Britney Spears poster once hung. Growing up in the early aughts, I remember venturing out on crisp Halloween nights and filling one of those plastic orange pumpkin buckets up to the brim, maybe flashing the bathroom lights three times to see if Bloody Mary would appear. Years later, I stood groggily in front of that mirror again with a cup of coffee and flashed the lights three times. The room was the same, but I was 30—and that was the true haunt.”
9) “Everything Is Coming Together”
“This song is the companion to ‘Arms.’ It’s about being in the moment with those miraculous ordinary days, when there’s food on the table and the people you love are doing all right. Where ‘Arms’ speaks to the universal grief and isolation of the times, ‘Everything’ is about putting the phone down and feeling the sun, allowing yourself to live in a moment of gratitude without guilt.”
10) “Lighter”
“Somewhere in West Texas, there’s an unassuming little bar on a dirt lot with a few motorcycles parked out front. The walls are covered in neon beer signs, and the ceiling looks like it could fall down at any moment. On a Friday night, the high-top barrel tables are pushed to the side of the room, and the old wooden floors come alive with well-seasoned boots, two-stepping to the local band. The first time I came to Texas, I came here—and the moment will never leave me. Everyone was so good at two-stepping, in a way I didn’t even know was possible. The couples looked weightless, as if they were hovering over the dance floor.
“Two stepping is just a simple pattern—literally two steps. But if you’ve ever tried it, you’ll know it requires locking in with your partner, a give and take of each other’s weight and gravity, meeting in the middle with a sort of centripetal force. ‘Lighter’ is a song about falling in love, but with the understanding that truly floating takes years of practice.”
See Alexa Rose live.
