All That Fades
The story behind one of my favorite songs.
I try to avoid sappy posts these days, but today is an exception. A few years ago, when we first moved to LA, I booked a lash lift appointment down the road from my house at a cute salon called Freija Collective. I met Katrina Urton, esthetician extraordinaire, and instantly felt at home with her, like we had some deep-rooted connection. She’s a Colorado native, but a Californian at heart, and her thoughtfulness and compassion radiate from literal miles away. When she mentioned that her husband Ben was the drummer in the band DIIV, I fangirled even harder, because DIIV’s album Is the Is Are was the soundtrack to the earliest, blissful days of my marriage.
I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Dan about her, and how I wanted to be her friend lol. Those first months in LA were some of my darkest and most isolated days, and meeting Katrina gave me a glimmer of hope again — if you know Katrina, you know she is the beamiest beam of light, and makes everyone around her better.
We continued to see each other here and there, and she posted on Instagram one day about wanting to work on music. I casually (and virtually) introduced her to my husband/producer/writer Daniel James, and they scheduled a songwriting session together. On the very first day that they met, they wrote this absolute gem of a track called All That Fades, which is officially out on streaming platforms today. What started as a simple session has beautifully evolved into a full-on band called Night Party — a collection of songs that poured out like streams of consciousness over the following weeks. Katrina’s raw and honest lyrics explore themes of addiction, co-dependency, and the struggles that often arise in long-term relationships. Dan filters through broken synthesizers, atonal strings, and chaotic samples to color what are, at their core, heartbreakingly simple songs. In their artist bio, I wrote:
Night Party is at once intimate and distant, overwhelming and subtle, shapeshifting and stagnate. Urton and James recall dreams and faraway memories, old sounds misinterpreted into something eerily familiar yet strangely new. All That Fades is an ambitious debut — an attempt to seek beauty where there is pain, honor silence where there is noise, and find expansion in the face of defeat.
Can I just say I feel like a proud parent, watching these two soar into special musical realms together? I’m grateful to have played a small part in their musical story, and I hold these songs so very close, as some of the most meaningful music in my life. I hope it affects you in some way too, big or small.
More music is coming soon, and Night Party is playing a free show at Zebulon in Los Angeles on November 10th with Janelane and Warm Human (tickets here). For now, you can listen to “All That Fades” on all streaming platforms.
Lots of love,
Elise
