Drop Nineteens’ Paula Kelley Announces First Solo Album in 20 Years, Shares New Song: Listen

Paula Kelley, a co-founding singer-guitarist in Boston shoegaze band Drop Nineteens and several other indie-rock acts, has announced her first solo album in 20 years. Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out is out March 27 via Wharf Cat. Lead single “Party Line” is described, by Kelley, as a “post-Cold War influenced track” that incorporates some of the gauzy shoegaze she’s knowing for, as well as some slowcore touches. Give it a listen below.

“When the song came to me it presented nearly fully formed: a pedaling bass line, a four part vocal harmony, an expansive soundscape,” Kelley said in a press release. “Sometimes songs sound great in your head but then don’t translate well into reality. I was lucky with this one. As I was recording part upon part, it felt as though the song was writing itself. It’s a dreamy song about dreams—not the kind that come during sleep, but rather wishes, anxieties, projections—as a way to work through and reconcile an unhappy past.”

Spanning 11 tracks, Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out was written over the past few years while Kelley was stabilizing her pathway to sobriety. Her fourth solo album overall, following 2006’s Some Sucker’s Life, Part 1: Demos and Lost Recordings, turns its ear toward pop hooks and also builds off Kelley’s background as an arranger and cowriter for studio sessions and indie film soundtracks.

Drop Nineteens broke up in 1995 and reunited in 2022. Their comeback album, Hard Light, came out that following year.

Read about Drop Nineteens’ Delaware in “The 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time.”