Sea Lemon
Natalie Lew grew up by the ocean, always harboring a fascination with the strange universes bubbling right below the surface. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest (she currently resides in Seattle), the peculiar and miraculous environment around her, filled with tide pools and marine life, has seeped into her worldview and the music she makes as Sea Lemon. Imbued by both a sense of wonder and trepidation, debut full length Diving For A Prize is a haunting vision of Lew’s own creation, a vividly assembled snapshot of a place that is both fantastical and deeply curious. Although Lew has always highlighted the intentional departure between the sonic semi-brightness of her music and its darker subject matter, Diving For A Prize fully submerges into fuzzier territory and murkier impulses. “When I make a song I think of it as its own little universe,” Lew explains. Inspired by artists like Enya, Caroline Palochek, Air and My Bloody Valentine, Lew’s “shoegaze but with pop structures” songs have a knack to be earworm-y when you least expect it, embedding themselves in the listener’s psyche. Produced by Andy Park (Deftones, Death Cab for Cutie), and buoyed by Lew’s aptitude for storytelling, the songs of Diving For A Prize often reveal themselves through an almost trance-like state, and through repeated listens gradually pull the curtains back to reveal hidden messages through their succinct earworms of emotion.