Premiere: Rising Tassie force Lasca Dry shares her debut album, Sweet Sea Surrender

Header image by Kelly Hammond.

It's always something super special watching an artist grow before your eyes, and Tasmanian musician Lasca Dry is someone who has treated us to that over the last twelve months. Initially, we met to premiere her single Do You Like Me That Way last year; an introductory moment to both her 60s/70s-stricken pop sound and everything that fuels it: "I wrote this song about myself and my personal struggles through wanting validation," she said on the single's release last year, a single as inspired by modern-day pop as it was past icons like Led Zeppelin.

The Ulverstone-raised musician then returned at the last moments of 2020 with a second single titled Better Than This, which showed a different edge to her indie-meets-pop-meets-electronic sound. Better Than This was built off the sounds she premiered with her earlier work, albeit in a way a touch more subtle; touches of folk and stripped-back indie-pop shining through her sound as she plucks from veins shared by The Beatles and other more psychedelic-leaning acts of that distant time.

Now, with her debut album Sweet Sea Surrender premiering today, Lasca Dry is edging closer to her breakthrough moment than ever, and it brings an opportunity to further welcome the musician and her craft to the limelight. The nine-track record is an exploration of her multi-faceted sound, drifting through centuries of musicianship as she builds from wide-ranging influences and adds them to her own pop-like songwriting, fusing together subtle guitar melodies and drifting vocals that together, are washed out with layers of rich nostalgia and potency.

Recorded at Melbourne's Run Stop Sound, Sweet Sea Surrender breaks down this combination of dated influences and Lasca Dry's pop sensibilities. It's simultaneously nostalgic and forward-thinking all in one, moving between a rotating cast of guitar and percussion that peak and fall in emphasis amongst Lasca's vocal, which always - time and time again throughout the album - adapts to the respective song's sound and adds her own distinct flourishing to the track, often letting you into her life in the process of doing so.

"The album explores a number of different topics all to do with struggles and learning curves in [my] life," she says on the record, and you can hear that within the album's backbone, and the emotive vocals that string together the wide-spanning influences and inspiration she plucks from. "Thoughts, feelings and new discoveries in life's meaning are all things that compel [me] to write and explore [myself] creatively," she continues.

The full record is out tomorrow February 26th, but you can take a dive into it below, as it premieres exclusively to Pilerats a day early:

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