Listen to That Dream Was Our Life’s intimate EP Destierro

“Written between chapters of Janna Levin, episodes of S-Town, and D&D sessions where I play a half-elf bard,” That Dream Was Our Life dropped a relaxed new EP Destierro, the epitome of a DIY record recorded with Apple phones and an emotional fire.

The decently quick 4-track collection is full of solo guitar work, as spacious plucky riffs float behind extremely personal struggles and self-referential material. Although a cheeky little piano and drum machine makes brief cameos in “Bookstore Cats” and “‘i miss you irl'” respectively, the stripped-back instrumentation turns the intimacy up to 11, diving straight into TDWOL’s daily messes.

Although a lot of the material, like most tear-filled projects go, focuses on loss and subsequent heartbreak of someone close and loved (“The way your tiny fingers used to lock in mine / Melting snowflakes in your hair at 2AM that start to shine / Does anything that dies ever come back to life”), we’re presented with another late-night listen after your FaceTime fight with your partner. And in this fickle world, you can’t have enough of those.