Album Notes

Alexandra Rising is the stage moniker of Leia Alexandra Manuel, a curly-haired only child born and raised in rural, south-central VA. In Fall 2006, after eight years of working with multitrack cassette recorders, she assembled a computer-based recording studio in her basement and forced the equipment into submission.

Leia's early influences included the memorable melodies and skillfully woven stories of 60s and 70s folk ballads, as well as the fiery vigor of Greek folk songs and the high drama of music from stage and screen. In middle school she discovered the alternative rock stations on her radio dial, and her notion of what music was and could be was transformed for good. From there she worked backwards, gleefully exploring all the rock'n'roll greats who had not appeared in her parents’ tame library. Today her musical tastes include anything that conveys genuine passion and rattles the cage of complacency.

AR's self-titled debut is a piercing call to the solitary and ambitious who are fighting derailment on their way to success. In the album's realm, love is a high-stakes game in which one quickly learns, in the words of Leonard Cohen, “how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.” The question that arises is of particular universal import: whether it is wise to isolate oneself in the interest of self-preservation.