It was when Stephen Day started playing guitar in high school that the Georgia native, and current Nashville resident, first decided he wanted to make a self-titled album. Even then, he knew that an album bearing his name would require certain demands: complete vulnerability and total honesty. The songs on his self-titled record, due out October 2, portrait in-focus snapshots of Day’s deepest emotions, and intricately weave together who he is  as a songwriter, musician, storyteller, and craftsman. From top to bottom, the listener can hear why he finally felt ready to present to them his namesake.

Now over a decade since the release of his 2015 debut EP, Undergrad Romance And The Moses In Me, Day knew it was time.

“It just kind of hit me that this was the moment to do it,” he explains. “I feel like I’m stepping into this confident space of emulating my heroes versus imitating them, and I wanted to have that as a flag and a marker, to be able to say ‘What you’re hearing is Stephen Day. It’s not Stephen Day doing something else.’ If somebody wants to know what I do, this is it.”

Who, then, is Stephen Day, and what does he do? Well, the 13 songs that bear his name demonstrate he’s a formidable, uncategorizable artist who’s able to flit between decades as well as genres—soul, R&B, rock’n’roll, and pop—with effortless ease. He cites three of his main inspirations as  Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, and Frank Sinatra, and there are certainly glimpses of their influence across the album. Co-produced by longtime collaborator Micah Tawlks along with multi-GRAMMY winning producer Ian Fitchuk the album begins with the dreamy, hushed contentment of “It Is What It Is,” eases into the infectious groove of “Rock Bottom Baby” before travelling back in time with the impassioned pop-rock of “Annie Breakdown” and “Yes I Do.”

Indeed, the latter two tracks in particular capture Day’s modus operandi on this album perfectly. They sound like classic songs from the ‘80s, yet they’re simultaneously contemporary and fresh.  Songs you swear must already have taken their place in the pantheon of music, but they’re Day’s  brand new additions. “Back In My Bed,” for instance, is a gloriously upbeat rock’n’soul lament, while “You Wouldn’t Know” is a power ballad that commands you to sing along at the top of your lungs. This album carries the very essence of who he is, both as a storyteller and a musician: timeless.

The delicate strains of “Mama, I Found Your Guitar”— gives you Day’s origin story. His  father is  a pastor, and his mother was a nurse practitioner who sang at church on Sundays. One afternoon, he found her guitar in a closet and asked her to teach him a few chords, which inadvertently set him on the  path he’s still on. The song, which was recorded on the very same nylon six string, brings the  story into the present day, embossing it with all the difficulties and uncertainties that come with being a musician while deeply romanticising it all.

“It’s made way for really beautiful things to happen, and it’s also made way for really heartbreaking things to happen,” says Day of his career to date. “Pursuing something like this feels like a very vulnerable thing to do, so that song is both admiration for my mother, while also being inspired yet confused about why I ended up on this path, how I ended up here now that I’ve been doing it for a minute, and questioning what its mean for the rest of my life. You know, am I doing the right thing? All those kinds of existential feelings.”

Those existential feelings were compounded by a deeply fraught personal time. After Day’s wife endured “some very intense medical surgeries,” the couple prepared themselves for the absolute worst. For a few months they were, as Day puts it, “living under the idea that she may not really be around that long.” Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. But the deep fear of loss  is addressed and conveyed by the plaintive, searching “Don’t Leave Me Like This.”

“It was a great way for me to work through these emotions that I had about the fear of losing my partner,” he remembers, “while giving someone else a way to read the story that might not be as heavy.”

That unguarded creativity was not only a key component in feeling ready to make a self-titled full-length, but the exposed emotion aligned with the intentional mission at the core of this album: ensure it is as human as possible. And so, working with Matt Chancey on bass, David Crutcher on keys, Ian Fitchuk on drums, Kevin Daily on auxiliary guitar and Scooter Spicer on percussion, that’s exactly what they did by tracking as a band live in the studio.

“We had two separate chunks of recording days to knock out the entire album,” says Day, “and it was the most amazing experience. It was how I had always dreamed records would be made in that sort of old-fashioned way. One of the things I wrote down and kept on a piece of paper in the studio was the phrase ‘In with the old, out with the new.’ I wanted to take the old way of doing things, but with the hope and prayer that whatever came out of the speakers didn’t feel like a retro album, but like 2029 or 2030.”

He succeeded. It’s the next chapter for an artist that has already seen more than 200 million streams to date, received cultural co-signs from peers like Teddy Swims, Allen Stone, and Cory Wong, as well as a major motion sync placement in Universal Pictures’ Strays. The next stage of Stephen Day is self-titled. Vulnerable, honest, in-focus snapshots of a generational songwriter, musician and storyteller. As the album  closes with the wistful and bittersweet  “Picture’s Perfect,” it sounds like the closing of one door and the opening of another. A loving retrospective on the Stephen Day of old and a welcome introduction to  the Stephen Day of the future.

Raised in the wilds of Vancouver Island, 26-year-old Elysia Biro (pronounced Eh-lee-sha Bee-row) is a technically gifted singer, songwriter, and pianist. A student of classical piano at age 4, Biro began writing her own music at 13 while teaching herself how to play jazz by ear after being inspired by the genre’s improvisational free form. After receiving her diploma in classical piano from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto and graduating high school at age 16, Biro earned her Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies for piano and voice before moving to England to complete her Master’s of Music degree at the University of York.

Crafting her unique sound from an expansive fusion of genres, Elysia Biro’s songwriting blends modern pop form and classical technique with jazz sensibilities. An expressive and introspective songwriter, her warm, soulful vocals reflect her journey through self-discovery, love, and introspection, painting a compelling portrait of life as she knows it right now, blossoming between seasons. Biro has quickly amassed a dedicated audience on social media through her captivating vocals and virtuosic transcriptions of jazz solos. Now based in Los Angeles where she writes, records and produces, Elysia Biro continues to combine worlds, creating sonic sanctuaries all her own.