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Aug 19, 2021 By Caleb Campbell

Next month Boston-based singer/songwriter Alisa Amador returns with her debut EP, Narratives. As she describes, her latest effort is a document of the breadth of human experience, examining the narratives that encompass us amidst powerful indie folk arrangements. “If human connection is a prism, this album is lifting it up to the light, and looking at it from many angles,” Amador says. She’s already shared “Timing” and “Slow Down,” her first two releases from the EP and she’s now back with her latest single, “Together,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

“Together” is the closing track on the EP, ending the record in startling fashion with a heartwarming tribute to friendship and camaraderie. Amador begins stark and solitary, accompanied only by the steady chime of her guitar as she acknowledges the pain that all too often defines life’s experiences一“All of the people of all of the Earth / Each with a piece of all this hurt / Some take it in, some give it away/ Among other things that I can’t explain.”

Yet, as throughout the rest of the EP, connection is the healer and savior for Amador. “When we’re together / There lies the art / We’ll make it better when it falls apart,” she says. That salve of quiet comfort takes on new power as the song reaches its climax, and Amador is joined by a triumphant chorus of voices and strings. In one voice, Amador and company declare their collective power and unity, bringing the track to an end with the steady chant of “together.”

Amador describes “Together” as, “The salve for your heart after breaking it open with ‘Burnt and Broken’ and ‘Nada Que Ver’; the other side of the coin of naming systematic violence. This song acknowledges all the pain and celebrates the revolutionary power of friendship in the face of all those odds. Perhaps the world will always be breaking. And, it is our purpose on Earth to be putting it back together again, together.”

She continues saying, “I wrote ‘Together’ three years ago, after a conversation with a musician who had lost the ability to play their instrument due to a rare mental condition that affects the fine control of your fingers. Suddenly, this musician could not do what they loved most. If I were in that position, I thought, I would be catatonic. But, this musician was telling me calmly, listing the ways that they were coping, and all of them had to do with connecting with others. Talking to friends, turning to their church, their family… I went home and started to write: all of the people of all of the Earth, each with a piece of all this hurt. That conversation had reminded me all over again that every person in the world carries pain in their heart…Yet, friendship pulls us out of despair.”

“I’ve always seen songs as this intangible space of belonging – a place outside of the physical realm that holds the listener and accompanies them in whatever they are going through. And now, in the absence of being able to hold a physical space with others, the song is the hug that we cannot give, the room that we cannot share.”

Listen to “Together” below and watch for Alisa Amador’s Narratives EP, out September 17th.