Juanita Stein’s second solo album arrives less than a year after her first, ‘America’, saw the former Howling Bells frontwoman exploring the iconography and cultural landscapes of a country that has always fascinated her from afar. Stein explains, “If ‘America’ was the starting point of a journey – the musical equivalent of me spreading my wings, then this record has made me feeling more confident in where I’m coming from and what it is I’m doing.”

Like the classic American road movies, Stein fell in love with as a teenager and still looks to for inspiration today, the first steps of that journey were taken cautiously, but she soon gathered speed, buoyed in no small part by the response she was met with while opening for The Killers on their massive 2017 UK arena tour, as well as other support slots with Michael Kiwanuka and Richard Hawley.

So when the opportunity arose late last year to spend a week in Austin Texas with producer Stuart Sikes, she explains, “I just grabbed it.” The songs that ultimately emerged from those sessions form a kind of self-portrait of where Juanita Stein is at, the lesson she’s learned, and the things that shaped her. ‘Until The Light Fade’ is an album rich in wisdom, empathy and hard-fought experience.

For Juanita Stein, ‘Until The Light Fade’ is a pact, a promise to herself to stay the course no matter what obstacles she may have to overcome on a journey that is still on getting started.