Beyond the intimacy, the tenderness, and the warmth of sister.'s new single "Abundance" is a soul-stirring vulnerability that lays bare our common humanity, expressing what it means to love, to be loved, and to meaningfully connect with others through breathtakingly raw, emotionally charged indie folk. - Atwood Magazine



New album Abundance out 10/20/2023 on Mtn Laurel Recording Co.



Sister. is a Brooklyn-based indie trio composed of Hannah Pruzinsky (they/she), Ceci Sturman (she/her), and James Chrisman (he/him). Senior year of college, Ceci wrote a song for a course assignment and asked Hannah, her roommate since freshman year, to sing it, and the two of them soon started gigging. In the five years since, they’ve been living together and writing songs that could only come from their friendship, trust, and openness. James joined in 2020, and the three of them grew close as collaborators and friends through the early days of the pandemic, during which they remotely recorded their 2020 debut EP Soft Spot. In 2021, Sister. followed up with their sophomore studio EP Something / Nothing.



Now, Sister. is releasing their debut LP, Abundance. The album was largely self-recorded in Woodstock, New York in a friend’s cabin, where a nearby creek was constantly picked up in the mics, and rain on the roof periodically ruined vocal takes. The band was finishing overdubs in Hannah’s closet back in Brooklyn when Felix Walworth (Told Slant, Florist) offered to play on the album, so Sister. enlisted Alex Harwood (Bloomsday) to record Felix’s drums and later to mix the record. A final song, “Desire,” was recorded in Felix’s bedroom, straight to tape.



The record opens with “Ghost,” a repurposed voice memo of Ceci playing her mom a song she’d just written about the two of them. James added guitar and synth to this, and the resulting track is a statement of purpose for the record: maximalist but handmade. The album teems with drum loops, creaking floorboards, synth strings, baritone guitars, chirping birds, space-bar clicks, and the close harmonies of old friends. All of this culminates in the title track, “Abundance,” a song written in response to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Gifts.” Together Hannah and Ceci sing: “So I’ll keep you in the hood of my sweatshirt / So you can keep eyes on the back of my ears / You said you want a gift / You’re not a giver / So I bleed / I bleed for you”



These nine songs span three years’ worth of collaborative songwriting between Hannah, Ceci, and James. There are acoustic laments like “Desire,” synthy anthems like “Guts”; there’s a song about an old fight between Ceci and Hannah (“Classon”), one about learning to live with anger (“Firing”), one about having a crush (“Guts”), one inspired by a tweet (“Gorilla vs. Cold Water”), but Abundance is a collection of songs about and made of friendship.