Singer-songwriter Billie Zizi of Edmonton, Alberta, is unveiling her long awaited new record, Levitate. The collection of dreamy songs, which range from earnest folk rock to eerie singer-songwriter, capture the artist’s experience of navigating life through her tight knit hometown community.
From the gas station love affairs of pitbull-walking, rhinestone adorned Edmontonians to the spiritual levity of transcendence, this album is a glimpse into my strange mind and the life I’ve lived. Loss, radiant love, transience, delirium and indefatigable hope are some of the themes. I dreamed this record into being over many years. It’s a love letter to Edmonton, to delighting in the simple things like hot dogs and friendship and the prairie sky and the absurdity of it all. To all the Dirt City angels, the big dreamers, the lovers, and the dancers, this is for you: I hope you like it. – Billie Zizi
“Midnight Sun” was born out of a writing prompt to reference a natural phenomenon. Zizi ran with the concept of the midnight sun, one where we are “soaked in the luminous 24 hour sun,” and in turn, the “gardens of our love would proliferate wildly and we would be intoxicated by the honeyed light.” Yet inevitably, the winter would come and with it the love would wither and die.
Co-produced with album collaborator Austin Parachoniak, “Midnight Sun” has an inherent groove to it with an arrangement meant to translate perfectly to a live setting, gradually deepening in intensity and heart as Zizi’s vocals and guitar lines grow around each other.