This time last year, Allston Pudding premiered Tory Silver’s EP Pepper. The singer-songwriter composed the songs by herself on guitar, and she played the release show with a backup band on bass, drums⁠—and for the first time⁠—a keyboard player. (“That was so flipping cool,” Silver said in our recent interview.) But lately, the grind of balancing a musical career with a 9-5 job is hitting her. She had to ask herself, “Is this still fun? Am I making good music?” The answer to that question was creating her latest single, “A While Now.”

The song opens with slightly distorted guitar and Silver singing about the things she’s been doing for a while now. She’s awake, she’s walking, she’s shaking. Each verse introduces a new musical element that fleshes out the story she’s telling with sounds instead of words. Drums create the feeling of walking purposefully. A change in tempo makes you feel the sweat above her eye and the arms of someone else. Brighter guitar riffs indicate her dreaming. A key change and a faded vocal effect ask, “Why do you hide?” Who’s to say whether she’s asking the person whose arms she feels, or herself. 

The single is the first in a future unnamed album that will coalesce by next year or even 2021. Her timeline is as unhurried as the song itself. Her goal for the album is to present one succinct idea: the project will describe an average day. “The best kind of songs are songs about the day, after it’s over, and you’re thinking about what happened,” Silver said. Each song will represent different feelings that arise under different circumstances. Silver looks to Andy Shauf’s The Party and Feist’s Pleasure as examples of concept albums she’s trying to emulate. Like those albums, each song represents a different aspect of the overarching theme.

For this single, the release party will be a backyard show for a few lucky guests. “I just wanted to keep it simple. It’s how it should be.”

Listen to “A While Now” below.