TIME

The life
between the songs.

Los Angeles has never suffered from a shortage of dreamers. The city is practically built on them. What interests Shorai, however, is what happens when the dreaming gives way to the work - when inspiration has to sit down at the piano, find the right notes, and make a convincing case for itself.

After more than fifteen years as a fixture of the Twin Cities jazz scene, Shorai arrives in Los Angeles with five original songs written just a few years ago, a lifelong affection for musicians who listen as carefully as they play, and a healthy suspicion of anything that mistakes polish for personality.

TIME — the ep began as a collection of songs that didn't necessarily know they belonged together. Each had its own temperament, its own demands, and, occasionally, its own rather inconvenient ideas about where it wanted to go. Songwriting, it turns out, is not unlike any other meaningful relationship: one can have excellent intentions and still find oneself negotiating with an entirely unreasonable third party.

The early mixes have been available on Bandcamp for nearly a year. Now, with producer Bryan Hanna - a musical collaborator and dear friend of two decades - guiding the final mastering process, the recordings are preparing for their next life. One might reasonably argue they've taken their time getting there.

There is a certain pleasure in hearing these songs again with the benefit of a few more months behind them. Not because they suddenly reveal some grand lesson, or because every lyric can be called upon to testify about the circumstances of its creation. Quite the opposite. They remain resistant to tidy explanations.

What connects them is less a single story than a particular musical sensibility: an affection for melody, a fascination with the possibilities of language, and the belief that a song becomes infinitely more interesting when the musicians playing it have something to say.

And Los Angeles? Well, reinvention here is practically a municipal pastime.

Shorai has no particular interest in arriving as someone entirely new. She would rather see what becomes possible when the right musicians, the right ideas, and a little good fortune find themselves in the same room.

Preferably one with a very good piano.