It’s been a busy year for Alexandria Maniak, better known to fans as Shortly, despite the COVID-19 pandemic still hanging around. Shortly released her debut full-length album Dancer back in September via Triple Crown Records. She returned to the world of touring in support of fellow Metro Detroiter Chloe Moriondo, as well as playing in her band.
Dancer features both songs written specifically for the record and tracks that Maniak has performed over the years. The process of revisiting older songs brought back a flood of memories for Shortly.
“It was great. It was uncomfortable. It was all of those things,” Maniak says. “It was really fun to sit down and record all of these songs at once. Being in the studio and finally laying it down I’m like, ‘What if this isn’t meant to be recorded?’ I’m taking this thing that we change up every time live and making it permanent.
That was kind of like a bittersweet feeling and I was all of a sudden like, ‘Wait, what if this is too vulnerable? What if this isn’t something that I actually feel comfortable sharing all of the time?’ I’m a lot happier now than I was when I wrote a lot of my earlier music, which I think helped get me through a lot of things and make me a happier person. But I wanted to have some kind of resolution instead of just, ‘I’m sad writing music.’ I really felt like I needed to go through what those songs meant to me instead of just what they were about. And that was an emotionally turbulent experience.”
Listen to the entire interview with Shortly below, where we also discuss her love of Spider-Man (particularly Andrew Garfield’s take on the webslinger), the evolution of her music, her friendship with Chloe Moriondo and more. Then listen to her perform acoustic versions of “Perpetually Blue” and “Finders Keepers.”
Photo credit: Dave Kim, Ferndale Radio
