Though we scorn it, exodus is fundamental to the human condition. Our ancestors were nomads, before they were custodians of land, they were custodians of change. With time, our ancestors learned to move with the seasons, learned to grow along nature, learned to live with the changes. Settlement is a relatively modern innovation. Humanity is, and always has been, an exercise in withstanding change.
Silver Deliverer, Aly & AJ’s latest studio album, is a story as human as it is unique. Aly and AJ Milchalka have been creating music with each other since they were teen-aged debutantes, starring in Disney Channel movies, opening Radio Disney events, and producing a venerable pop catalog in the process. Silver Deliverer is an even further departure from the duo’s Disney Channel days than their similarly mature A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun, Aly & AJ’s fourth studio album; a pop rock record braided with inflections of 1960s and 1970s soft rock, disco, and country music. This increased depth in tone and interiority reflects the sisters’ personal transformation, but their artistry truly blossoms within Silver Deliverer, which is more so an ode to liminality than the outright reinvention that the duo achieved in their fourth studio album.
Silver Deliverer is a story told at the juncture of womanhood and sisterhood. It is a story about change, and the question of how one can ever learn to accept it. It is a story about exodus.
“I think this record is a beautiful indication of us embracing that really feminine part of ourselves, that strength that is in every woman,” Aly said with an air of provenance. “Sometimes you want to tuck it away, and sometimes you want to share that with people. It’s this give and take. This beautiful dance.”
Conceived along the fulcrum of country rock and folk pop, Silver Deliverer is an almanac of vignettes and revelations, pitched against a shapeshifting heartland. The title track, “Silver Deliverer,” portrays the mental turbulence of leaving one home for another. The scenery is lush and immersive, illustrating a eucalyptus-canopied Los Angeles canyon community receding in the rearview, once a home, now a memory in a photo frame. The chorus is a plea to a figure of benediction: an angel, a saint, a Holy Ghost, a passed loved one.
Silver deliverer / In a time of need / Can I borrow your wings?
The Milchalka sisters shared that the title track was inspired by Aly moving to another part of Los Angeles. After living much of their adult lives within a stroll across the street of each other, this move represented something monumental.
“It’s so beautiful when we can just kind of pick up, like any of us are able to do that we just don’t out of fear,” AJ mused.
Throughout the album, Aly & AJ brave the torrential emotion that powers change, and the inherent migration that comes with it—whether emotional, physical, or otherwise. In the landscape of Silver Deliverer, the Milchalka sisters are always on the move. While “Silver Deliverer” confronts the arrival of change, while “I Don’t Know What It Is” offers a catharsis on the matter, as the narrator desperately tries to transform a new house into a home. Aly & AJ explained that this song is a watershed moment on the album, portraying the frustration that comes with nesting a new home, and the feelings of incompatibility that arise as a result.
The song’s instrumentation is truly remarkable, owing to Aly’s & AJ’s desire to develop the experience of habitat within the song. As the Milchalka sisters harmonize over weeping guitars and an infectious backbeat, spry canyon wilderness sounds off in the background. A backing choir of birds chirping, frogs croaking, and leaves rustling in the breeze. AJ described conveying the majesty of nature through such small and gentle details as possessing a feminine quality. This thematic sentimentality manifests in expressive lyrics and disarming productions.
“Dandelions” renders a rolling country road in shades of bluegrass-tinged vocals and wistful lyrics. The song is a pensive lullaby to what was, at the time, Aly’s unborn son, Jack. She sings to him while on tour, rolling down a river of Southern shows, wondering what world her “California poppyseed” will blossom in. The chorus chimes,
So keep on wishing on those dandelions / Turn all those sidewalk flowers into dreams / Just keep on searching for a new horizon / It’s yours to reach, it’s yours to reach, it’s yours to reach.
The lyrics are reverential and summon something that is distinctly California: the space within the song is honored, celebrated, like the ephemeral scenery between one Californian city and the next.
“Our heart will always have a huge part here—in California—because it’s where we’re from,” Aly said. “Until you really live here and learn all of its little quirks do you really start to understand why there’s this spell that’s cast on you when you do live here.”
In crafting the sonic landscape of Silver Deliverer, Aly & AJ discussed how they ensured their creative environment was nothing short of hospitable. Aly & AJ described a pact-held bond between themselves and their producer, Jonathan Wilson, to remain as authentic and vulnerable as possible. Shortly into the process of writing and producing Silver Deliverer, Aly became pregnant with her first son, and gave birth just as touring commenced. She marveled at the experience as transformative and an extension of the arc explored in Silver Deliverer, blending lives seemed to blend with the themes of their record. Aly & AJ closely intertwined the experience of living with the experience of making and producing and performing Silver Deliverer, approaching both with the same relentless vulnerability.
The lead single, “What It Feels Like” offers parity to the sisters’ condition of sentimentality. An electric guitar-driven anthem, “What It Feels Like” lands as a manifesto, a freedom roar among the subtler dialogues on the album. In the song, Aly & AJ reflect on aging and transitioning to new stages in womanhood, while maintaining their passion, artistry, and aspirations. “We were all.. trying to kind of embrace this new moment in our life,” Aly shared. “Float down the river like a cork, where you’re just giving into it. You’re not fighting the current. You’re just embracing it and saying, ‘Okay, whatever is going to come my way, I’m just going to be there to embrace.’” Keeping with the spirit of exhibition, the instrumental virtuosity of the record, “What It Feels Like” included, imbues the record with a transcendental character. Songs on Silver Deliverer coast to ends on levitating guitar solos and instrumental fireworks.
“It was very much about honoring the song and really letting the songs feel like they had air to breathe. They didn’t need to be a three minute song,” Aly elaborated on the pair’s choice to extend the outros. “If they were five minutes and 32 seconds, then great. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Aly & AJ’s Silver Deliverer is in possession of more than just a silver spirit, but a bloody, beating heart as well. Every song is heartfelt and personal, yet bursting with vitality and soul. Silver Deliverer grasps those ineffable feelings that mark change with four hands and do not let go. The listener of Silver Deliverer will feel those sonic hands hold on to them too.
“Making music is a bit of a medicine. It’s very much something that brings stability to my mental health,” AJ said. “We’ve told so many beautiful stories throughout the years, and we’ve written a lot of material, and it’s never about what is this journey necessarily going to be like for us? It’s also about how do we take our fans on this journey with us? And I do think this record speaks to growth and self acceptance and joy and deliverance.”
