Believer - Sister Ray
Royal Mountain Records
Released on April 4th, 2025
Hailing from Sturgeon County, Alberta and first establishing themselves in Edmonton, Sister Ray set their base in Toronto which has become a nexus point for their rise to notoriety over the releases of their LP Communion (2022) and their EP Teeth (2023). With the release of Communion, Ella Coyes has found themselves longlisted for the 2022 Polaris Prize, earning praise from Pitchfork, NPR, The Guardian, Paste, Line of Best Fit, Clash, and landing appearances at Pitchfork Festival in Paris and London and Primavera.
With these achievements as a backdrop, Believer (2025) comes in two years after their last release. The album takes everything that was established in the earlier releases and uplifts it to a wealth of wide ranging sounds and glimmering production that flatters both Coyes’ voice and songwriting — every sonic aspect of composition and arrangement comes across so fluidly and fully as to create an longing and hopeful ambiance that suits what Sister Ray does best.
Out in the wild, I’ve heard comparisons tying Sister Ray’s sound to the likes of Big Thief and Adrienne Lenker fans. This is no accident given the involvement of Jon Nellen as a producer who has worked with the former act. That kind of sound palette in production only makes explicit and apparent what we have always heard there in Sister Ray’s work for over a decade, not so much as mimicking another act but more like finding a perfect fit of its own right.
Thematically, Communion and Believer stand in contrast to each other. As noted by the artist, if the tracks on Communion were fueled with an intentional sense of urgency, for their songwriting to serve as a vehicle for excavating revelations in motion, Believer yearns in a different direction. Hope and groundedness nurture Sister Ray’s subject matter in Believer with tracks such as the titular and opener track which depicts the intimate disarming of cynicism, “Magic” which focuses on the caring ways in which hold each other in living turbulence, the ruminations about permanence and love in “Building,” and the belief-inspiring company described in “Christmas.” My favourite track overall is the final track (because of course we have to save the best for last) with “Diamonds,” a track which brings some of the best of Sister Ray’s songwriting and lyricism together for a song about the mismatching and misfittings in the givings and takings of love.
Believer is an album with an air of hope looking-on into another world, an elsewhere, another life, a past life, or even a future life. Grounded by its lyrical poetry, Coyes’ sound gives space to all these aspirations and longings, joyfully accepting one’s lot in life, at times uncertain about whether or not that’s deserved, or whether one is getting enough — in spite of all the seeming contradictions in these themes, the heart of the matter is a hope that strings together all of these outlooks that this unique album offers.
