Dana Sipos (Dan-ah Sea-pose) opens her new album, The Astral Plane, with an invitation for the listener: to revel in the quiet, sometimes off-putting nature of the spaces in between. ‘Don’t let the light in, don’t let the moon on, I just want to sit with the darkness for a little bit / The day has fallen down.’ Winding down the opening track, Sipos meditates on the temporary, often painful nature of our earthly experience: ‘We’re two broken bones, I guess, camped out in borrowed bodies just waiting to set.’

This invitation arrives after a full minute of undulating piano and shimmering guitar, guiding the listener into an emotionally and sonically rich landscape. What follows is a deeply personal exploration, tracing the imprints of memory that form and take hold over the many lifetimes of a person, a family, the environment. Running parallel to this investigation of family histories and legacies, there are strong undercurrents of collective climate grief, the shifting faces of loss and inherited trauma echoing the ecological crises of our time.

Many albums offer a snapshot in time, or a glimpse behind the curtain into a fleeting certain moment in the writer’s story. On The Astral Plane, Sipos instead invites the listener beneath the surface, diving into complex personal histories and relationships and their ongoing reverberations, from the past and into the present and future.

For The Astral Plane, Sipos once again teaming up with experimental producer Sandro Perri and reunited with her accomplished studio band for the project, consisting of Thomas Hammerton (keys, piano, organ), Mark McIntyre (bass), Nick Zubeck (guitar), and Blake Howard (percussion), with guest appearances from Lydia Persaud (vocals) and Michael Davidson (vibraphone). To bring the new songs to life, the crew decamped to a large converted 1860s stone carriage house, The House of Miracles, in Cambridge, Ontario, in the summer of 2020. The result is an impeccably curated collection of sounds, anchored by Sipos’ haunting vocals and evocative lyrics.

This LP is the album Sipos has been preparing to write her whole life. Her grandparents survived the Holocaust in their youth and later, with two young children in tow (including Dana’s mother), fled Hungary during the Communist Revolution of 1956. “My grandparents had miraculous lives,” Sipos says. “As child survivors, they both lost so much. During their escape from Hungary they were thrown in jail, sent back, escaped again; my mother was drugged to stay quiet on the journey and almost didn’t survive. They arrived in Canada with $5 sown into a jacket pocket and didn’t speak a word of English. I feel very lucky that they shared these stories and experiences with us.” From her grandfather, she also inherited a love for singing, Jewish jokes and Yiddish humour: “I grew up with a love of stories and storytelling across the board, the unfathomably dark and painful. And despite — or perhaps because of — the hardships, the ability to turn that darkness into humour.” Sipos became a careful observer and close listener at the kitchen table on her grandparents’ farm, where they settled in southern Ontario.

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Throughout the album, Dana unearths the trauma of her grandparents' early lives, which took a noticeable toll on her family in later years. Sipos has long infused a quality of thoughtful observation into her songwriting, but there’s a new urgency that drives many of these songs. “Skinny Legs” is a goodbye letter to her beloved grandmother, asking questions that cannot be posed in real time. “Greenbelt” specifically explores her upbringing on the farm and the ways, both subtle and overt, that trauma impacted the family over time. And on “Hoodoo”, Sipos explores how this intergenerational legacy mirrors the profoundly damaged earth that generations to come will inherit, highlighting the lasting and cyclical nature of trauma.

In writing these songs, Sipos is holding memories, often painful ones, up to the light and asking: What is the contour of these memories in your body? How do they shape you? How are these inherited memories and experiences absorbed? What does their aftermath look and feel like?

Described as “slightly strange and completely mesmerising” (Gold Flake Paint UK), Sipos’ work combines enigmatic lyrics and bold production choices. Hailed as a “luminous and compelling work” by Exclaim!, her 2018 release Trick Of The Light was nominated for English Songwriter of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards, shortlisted for the Ontario Arts Council Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award and the Kerrville Folk Festival “New Folk” songwriter competition. The release was supported by tours and festival dates throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Trick Of The Light received acclaim from CBC, The Bluegrass Situation, Penguin Eggs, Folk Roots Radio (UK), and No Depression. Trick Of The Light followed a 2015 album released on Nashville-based Muddy Roots Records and was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in the Pushing The Boundaries category, celebrating innovation in creating new folk sounds, extensive international touring and caught the eye of outfits like No Depression who lauded Sipos as “a consummate singer and songwriter with a wholly unique sound.”