• News

• All

Feb 20, 2025 By Mark Redfern Photography by Seven Ruck

Minimalist singer/songwriter Lael Neale has announced a new album, Altogether Stranger, and shared its first single, “Tell Me How to Be Here,” via a self-directed video. She’s also announced some tour dates. Altogether Stranger is due out May 2 via Sub Pop. Check out the new single and album details below, followed by the tour dates.

Altogether Stranger finds Neale returning to Los Angeles after three years of living in rural Virginia. She was born and raised in Virginia before moving to Los Angeles then back to VA during the pandemic and now back to LA again. The video for “Tell Me How to Be Here” superimposes images of LA on top of a double exposed Neale as she sings the song.

“On returning to Los Angeles I felt like an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet so I’m writing from the perspective of a being from another realm witnessing the peculiarities of humanity,” says Neale in a press release.

“In the course of writing this record there was one song I could never finish. The main line was, ‘I don’t belong here, I am an altogether stranger.’ I meant ‘stranger’ as a noun, not an adjective. Even though I abandoned the song, the lost chorus stuck with me & became the unspoken motif of the record,” says Neale of the album’s title.

Altogether Stranger is Neale’s third Sub Pop album and the follow-up to Star Eaters Delight (which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2023) and Acquainted With Night (which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2021).

In 2024 Neale shared the new song “Electricity,” which is not featured on the new album.

Regular collaborator Guy Blakeslee produced and mixed the album, which was recorded at home. Chris Coady mastered Altogether Stranger.

Read our interview with Lael Neale on Star Eaters Delight.

Read our rave review of the album here.

Read our 2021 interview with Lael Neale.

Altogether Stranger Tracklist:

1. Wild Waters
2. All Good Things Will Come to Pass
3. Down on the Freeway
4. Sleep Through the Long Night
5. Come On
6. Tell Me How to Be Here
7. New Ages
8. All is Never Lost
9. There From Here

Lael Neale Tour Dates:

Thu. Apr. 10 - Los Angeles, CA - Zebulon
Fri. Apr. 25 - New York City, NY - Public Records
Sat. May 10 - Dublin, IE - Workman’s Cellar
Sun. May 11 - Belfast, UK - McHughs
Wed. May 14 - Lausanne, CH - Le Romandie
Thu. May 15 - Dijon, FR - La Vapeur
Fri. May 16 - Paris, FR - Le Hasard Ludique
Sat. May 17 - Brussels, BE - Les Nuits Botanique
Mon. May 19 - Amsterdam, NL - DOKA
Tue. May 20 - Hamburg, DE - Nachtasyl
Wed. May 21 - Berlin, DE - Kantine am Berghain
Fri. May 23 - Copenhagen, DK - Huset
Sat. May 24 - Stockholm, SE - Echo Three Fest
Tue. May 27 - Bristol, UK - The Louisiana
Wed. May 28 - London, UK - Omeara
Thu. May 29 - Manchester, UK - YES Basement
Fri. May 30 - Newcastle, UK - Cumberland Arms
Sat. May 31 - Glasgow, UK - Hug & Pint

Subscribe to Under the Radar’s print magazine.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.