Alexandria Maniak (they/she) has always been at the heart of Shortly, but it’s a project that came together in an instant. Armed with their own songs and a ringing set of chords, they introduced themselves in a Michigan backyard with the name they’ve repeated while sharing the stage with everyone from Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties to Phoebe Bridgers. Audiences and listeners alike dove headfirst into 2018’s Richmond EP, a cavernous and penitent lens into Maniak’s wars between self and faith, humanity and higher power. Shortly has now arrived with their debut album, Dancer, which takes the rejection and confusion of previous material and transforms it into something freeing and exultant, reconciling Maniak’s past and present with one swift maneuver.
Like Richmond, Dancer was produced by the band—including longtime collaborators Austin Stawowczyk and Kris Herrmann—and Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Smidley) in Philadelphia. Much of the album came together in the studio while winter froze the East Coast, developing from sketches on codependence, gender dysphoria, and the tenderness of belonging. The record’s growth in the studio led to standout moments like “Frame of Reference,” which was reworked into a throbbing, piano-driven late-album lift, or the claustrophobic electronics of “The Lightness,” opening the record with flecks of Auto-Tune and palpable darkness. Shortly’s songwriting gravity deepens as the arrangements peel back their layers, leading to a bruising vignette of unrequited queer high school love (“Locker Buddies”) or the exploration of a heavenly other world (“Perpetually Blue''). Nothing sends a clearer message than the title track, a triumphant look back at a devastating car accident which left Maniak with no choice but to work through her newfound limitations. It’s the album’s loudest and boldest thesis statement, where the joy and catharsis of songwriting overcomes the pain and frustration of new challenges, no matter what they may be.
“Music is so important to me as a form of art. It’s so fleeting...you can only experience it as it’s playing,” Maniak explains. Dancer, with all its violent crises of faith, lingers long after its last rites.