Vegas [LP]

Dead Gowns - Vegas [LP]

Geneviève Beaudoin, the Portland, Maine-based songwriter behind Dead Gowns, went to Las Vegas in the summer of 2021 to help a close friend move and start a new life there. But buried within that newness, there was an old and gradually widening fracture — and in that city, the friendship ended. Feeling raw and unraveled, Beaudoin realized these were songs she needed to hear, as much as she needed to write.

Recorded in a farmhouse at the foot of the White Mountains with Beaudoin's long-time partner Luke Kalloch, and produced by Sam Kassirer and Colin Lester Fleming, Vegas is a series of raw, smoldering songs that suddenly gape. It is an album that watches grief move, point by point, every instrument a response to the ache of Beaudoin's voice. In the end, despite its title, Vegas is an album that really belongs to the wild Maine coast, Beaudoin's home: wistful and corrosive, giving and taking, strangely graceful.