Beatrix Turns Memory Into Atmosphere on We Swallowed The Sky

Beatrix’s We Swallowed The Sky feels like opening a door in a house you used to know and finding the rooms rearranged. The second album from LA singer-songwriter Arielle Kasnetz moves through memory and lets old feelings appear in new shapes.

The album is an anachronistic and deeply introspective meditation on memory, one that refuses the comfort of chronology in favour of the way recollection actually unfolds. A piano phrase lingers just long enough to feel like an unresolved thought, whilst strings swell almost imperceptibly before receding into the background and melodies shift effortlessly between tenderness and quiet accusation. Throughout, Beatrix demonstrates an acute understanding of memory’s refusal to remain fixed. The past is never simply revisited; it continually interrupts the present, resurfacing in fragments that feel at once distant and immediate.

The title track, “We Swallowed the Sky,” is one of the album’s most suspended moments. Its gentle 6/8 sway gives the impression of a memory caught in perpetual motion, forever circling back on itself. Beatrix sings from a place where romance and disillusionment sit side by side, letting the song hold the enormity of feeling something deeply. 

Elsewhere on the record, “Dead Dog” is more volatile. Where other parts of the album drift and shimmer, this track feels like its breaking open, with the band pushing the song into something rawer and more physical. “Class Reunion” moves differently, sharpening the album’s emotional tension into a scene, with the specificity of a short story, all glances, posture, and old power dynamics resurfacing under polite conversation. “Upstate” conversely carries its sadness with a lighter hand. It almost sounds like escape, even as it remains tethered to what cannot be fully outrun.

The album was made with a remarkable group of musicians, including players whose work has touched records by artists like Joni Mitchell, Sufjan Stevens, Fiona Apple, Kacey Musgraves, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. But what makes We Swallowed The Sky compelling is not just the calibre of the room, it is how carefully Beatrix’s collaborators seem to orbit the songs themselves. The arrangements are generous, but they never crowd her. The record gets bigger without losing the feeling that it began somewhere private.

We caught up with Beatrix to talk about the world of the album, the instinctive nature of her writing, and how these songs came together.

Elsewhere on the record, “Dead Dog” is more volatile. Where other parts of the album drift and shimmer, this one breaks open. It feels less like remembering than finally saying the thing out loud, with the band pushing the song into something rawer and more physical. “Class Reunion” moves differently, sharpening the album’s emotional tension into a scene. It has the specificity of a short story, all glances, posture, and old power dynamics resurfacing under polite conversation. Then there is “Upstate,” conversely which carries its sadness with a lighter hand. It almost sounds like escape, even as it remains tethered to what cannot be fully outrun.

The album was made with a remarkable group of musicians, including players whose work has touched records by artists like Joni Mitchell, Sufjan Stevens, Fiona Apple, Kacey Musgraves, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. But what makes We Swallowed The Sky compelling is not just the calibre of the room,. iIt is how carefully Beatrix’s collaboratorseveryone seems to orbit the songs themselves. The arrangements are generous, but they never crowd her. The record gets bigger without losing the feeling that it began somewhere private.

We caught up with Beatrix to talk about the world of the album, the instinctive nature of her writing, and how these songs came together.

There’s a ghostly quality to the album, not just lyrically, but in the arrangements and the way certain emotions seem to echo across songs. How intentional was that sense of haunting when you were building the world of the record?

When I’m recording I am not really thinking about the outcome of what I’ll make. It’s the same with writing. It’s a very instinctual and emotional process. I wouldn’t say the sense of haunting you’re feeling was intentional, but it was inevitable. The songs called for those kind of arrangements and production and we did our best to execute. I’m pleased that you sense you got of certain emotions echoing across songs. It’s important to me for songs on an album to feel held together by some invisible string.

“We Swallowed The Sky” has this waltz-like quality that makes it feel almost suspended in time. Did the rhythm of the song shape the way you wrote about memory and distance?

Yes, that song has a 6/8 time signature which is similar to a waltz. When I’m writing a song, the words and rhythm and melody and chords all emerge at the same time. So yes the rhythm shapes the lyrics and vice versa. They’re married. The minor waltz fits with the sentiment of the song which is about a past betrayal.

The album features this incredible circle of musicians, many of whom have played on records by artists like Joni Mitchell, Sufjan Stevens, Fiona Apple, Kacey Musgraves, and Phoebe Bridgers. How did that community come together around the record, and did hearing these songs interpreted by such seasoned players change your relationship to them?

I live in east Los Angeles is the short answer. There’s an incredible community of artists and musicians here. All of them are working on different records all of the time but I think it was very special to bring them all together in this certain combination. And I hope part of that equation is that they were into the music but you’d have to ask them. Hearing the songs interpreted by them was a dream come true. But I loved the songs before anyone else played them, too.

You trained in classical music for much of your life, performing stories and feelings that belonged to other people. How did it feel to make a record that is so explicitly yours, both emotionally and musically?

This is my second album so my break away from classical music happened a while ago at this point. I am still very grateful for my training and background and think I am writing the way I do because of it and not in spite of it. That being said, I find the process of performing my own music written from my own life experience to be a more fulfilling, vulnerable and honest endeavor.

You’ve said songwriting lets you access parts of your brain you are not always fully aware of. Was there anything this album revealed to you after the fact, once the songs were finished?

The album itself was the revelation.

That answer might be the cleanest way into We Swallowed The Sky. The record does not feel like an explanation so much as a discovery, something pulled from the subconscious and arranged.

Following her first-ever tour supporting Cece Coakley, Beatrix is bringing We Swallowed The Sky into its next life beyond the record itself.