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Sep 02, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Bobby Tewksbury

Dayton, Ohio-based singer/songwriter Paige Beller has been been a fixture in midwest indie scenes for years, quietly crafting the multi-instrumental approach and outsider sensibilities that have shaped her music. Though her emotive style has drawn comparisons to 2000s indie touchstones like Rilo Kiley and Feist, she also holds a wonderfully idiosyncratic musical instinct that sets her in her own lane, equally pulling from basement DIY circuits and doo-wop. Tomorrow Beller debuts her debut full-length LP, I’ll Be Better via SofaBurn Records, but you can get an early listen to the record today, premiering with Under the Radar.

Though Beller is largely alone on her debut, I’ll Be Better feels like a full-band production. Gorgeous harmonies, thick percussion, and a variety of keys, synths, and guitars dance through Beller’s songs, creating a grand sense of scale for what is fundamentally an intimate record. Beller conjures singular spacious grandiosity with the opener, “So Much Water,” colored by swelling harmonies, visceral percussion, and ethereal chants. Meanwhile, the title track, “I’ll Be Better,” creates an almost carnival-esque atmosphere, with lilting melodies and a standout guitar solo. Elsewhere she explores sparser soundscapes, shaping fragile harmonies and gentle finger-picking around heartrending lyricism with “Brautigan” and building from solitary vocals and keys to a towering march on “Piss Soaked.”

Running through each song, whether immense or insular, is Beller’s powerful lyrical voice. As she explains, “‘I’ll Be Better’ is an album about trying and failing, and not trying hard enough. Most of the songs were written in a warehouse in Dayton OH, alone with my thoughts and my cat. Up until that point I had been doing just about anything I could to escape that kind of self-reflection and work. Being drunk all the time is not conducive to growth. The songs are conversations with myself, and also the people that I hurt. I became fixated on not being that person anymore. The writing is sad and at times melodramatic. The title serves as a promise.”

Check out the full album early below, out everywhere September 3rd via SofaBurn Records.