Alex Amor releases debut album 'Heavenly Bodies'

 Scottish singer-songwriter Alex Amor today releases her debut album Heavenly Bodies via New York independent label VERO Music. Its arrival precedes performances at All Points East on Lorde’s headline day tomorrow, 22 August, and Rough Trade Denmark Street on 26 August.

Written during a period of intense personal change - including a move from London to Brighton via an extended period at home in Glasgow - Heavenly Bodies finds Amor navigating what she calls “love, loss and liminal spaces.” Across the album, celestial imagery becomes a lens through which to examine distinctly earthly experiences, reflecting her fascination with cosmic symbolism and the idea that the patterns of our personal lives might mirror the rhythms of the universe.

The record represents a point of transformation for Amor. Following three EPs and more than eight million streams, Heavenly Bodies expands the raw indie-pop charge of her earlier work into a more immersive world of dream-pop and “cosmic Americana.” Its songs reckon with grief, self-actualisation, distance, longing and the shifting emotional terrain of adulthood.

The dreamlike ‘Meet On The Moon’ and ‘Roses’ both serve as paeans to late loved ones, while focus single ‘This Must Be The End’ channels what Amor describes as “complex female rage.” Throughout the record, vulnerability is balanced with control, allowing intimate confessions to unfold within shimmering guitars, soft-focus synths and quietly expansive choruses.

“When you put out an album, it’s really the moment where you say, ‘Hello world, this is me, this is my sound,’” says Amor. “My life has changed so much in the past few years, all of which has inspired this music. I just needed to come home to myself first; to feel grounded in what I was making before sharing it with others. It felt like a calling.”

For Amor, music-making is an inherently spiritual act. Heavily informed by meditation, rune reading and the work of pioneering Swedish mystic Hilma af Klint, Heavenly Bodies connects its deeply personal songwriting to something larger and more unknowable. The album’s title reflects both the celestial spheres that shaped its visual world and the human bodies at the centre of its many love songs.

Written and recorded alongside a close “holy trinity” of collaborators: Peter Brien (Kojaque, Kean Kavanagh), Baz Kaye (Jessie Ware, Maribou State) and Karma Kid (Jessie Ware, Bakar), Heavenly Bodies was recorded in Hackney Wick before being mixed by Matthew Neighbour (Role Model, Lord Huron) and mastered by Katie Tavini. The close-knit, trusting nature of the sessions allowed its songs to evolve free from outside noise or expectation, until they felt warm and lived-in.

The album includes previously released singles ‘Meet On The Moon’, ‘Icarus’, ‘Avalanche’, ‘Aquamarine’ and ‘Inside’, which together have amassed more than 600,000 Spotify streams and 730,000 YouTube views. The campaign has drawn support from BBC Radio 1, The Line of Best Fit, DIY, CLASH, Dork, Wonderland, The Skinny, MTV, Ones To Watch and more, with The Skinny describing the record as “a revelatory introduction.”

Its final preview, ‘Inside’ - described by BBC Radio 1's Maia Beth as "just really special" on her Future Pop show - distils the album’s emotional scope into what Amor calls a “sad-banger lullaby for loved ones gone too soon.” The nearly six-minute track moves through grief, family addiction, intergenerational trauma and the turbulence of Amor’s Saturn Return, its verses unfolding in a stream-of-consciousness style.

“I wrote this album to process my own grief, and there are some songs that are really hard to sing,” Amor explains. “But I wanted to heal that side of myself and really lean into the emotions that I’d neglected for a long time. I hope that, if people are listening to songs about the darker side of life, they can reflect on their own lives and really get into their own feelings.”

The release follows a year that has seen Amor perform at Liverpool Sound City, The Great Escape and Footsteps Festival, alongside support dates with Liang Lawrence, Prima Queen and Good Neighbours. Tomorrow she joins the bill for All Points East’s Lorde headline day, before performing an intimate in-store and signing at Rough Trade Denmark Street on 26 August.

With Heavenly Bodies, Alex Amor steps into a world entirely of her own making - one where earthly emotion, spiritual curiosity and cosmic wonder continually orbit one another.

“Above all else, I’d love people to escape and dive into the world of Heavenly Bodies,” she adds. “I hope it gives them some dopamine and joy, despite its moments of sadness.”

Alex Amor's debut album 'Heavenly Bodies' is out now via VERO Music, available digitally and on 12" 'Translucent Glass' vinyl via Alex's store and via Rough Trade.

LIVE DATES

22 August - London, All Points East with Lorde

26 August - London, Rough Trade Denmark Street (In-store)

'Heavenly Bodies' - tracklist

1. As Above, So Below

2. Seeing Angels

3. Meet On The Moon

4. Aquamarine

5. Avalanche

6. This Must Be The End

7. Icarus

8. Still Your Girl

9. Sweet Loathing

10. Inside

11. Roses

12. Only The Beginning