Artist Kiki Smith was quoted saying “It’s as if Sandy glows in the dark and is tenacious in her clarity, love and wisdom. She sweeps away that which obstructs the light and shines forth. Everything in her being and music is luminescent.”
Sandy Bell’s latest album comprises songs that are mostly in through-composed form, ENTELECHY is a record that was written during what Bell refers to as a ‘breakdown on the forest floor’ and subsequently recorded with the layered opulence and precision of celestial arrangements by her partner and producer, Jeff Lipstein in Woodstock, NY. The album was mastered by Chris Gehringer (Lana Del Ray, Rosalia, St. Vincent) at Sterling Sound.
The word ENTELECHY (en-ˈte-lə-kē) originates with Aristotle ~ ”That which realizes or makes actual what is otherwise merely potential.”
Whether it be via her own imagination or something dispatched through the imaginal realm, Sandy has always been interested in what can be experienced but not seen. So from an earthly self who often feels disoriented – she seeks refuge in the non physical. Throughout the process of writing the record, she was able to commune with what she thinks of as her ENTELECHY – thus demanding an upheaval in her life force. The LP is supported by singles “Monster Trying To Be A Lover” and “Olivia Lumen.”
“One of the darkest, most moving song cycles this critic has heard since Patty Griffin’s Living With Ghosts or Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska” – Stereo Embers Magazine
Alternative musician, singer-songwriter Sandy Bell plumbs the damaged American psyche with the poetical precision of Emily Dickinson and the cinematic psychological acuity of David Lynch. In essence, she transmutes the bone-core despair and grief of broken American dreams and fears into a sonic cathedral of songs – a cathartic transfiguration of pain to reckoning. Bell’s solo debut album, When I Leave Ohio (2017), is an intensely personal excavation of broken dreams, of the difficulties of love, of the oft quiet rage that can consume oneself and those we love.
In one of Sandy’s past lives in California, she worked and wrote with the brilliant Jeff Buckley, and had once in a lifetime, long term engagements working with George Carlin and Steven Spielberg. But when heroin addiction took hold of her, Sandy went dark and lived on and off Hollywood Blvd for several years. The healing and re-socialization has been a long road making this album even more poignant in her trajectory.
Born the youngest of five in Cleveland, OH, her father was an ice deliveryman and community college teacher and her mother worked at hotels, grocery stores and the local horse track. Even though there was “a beautiful attempt at the American dream,” her family life was darkened by the realities of the myth and Bell developed a “distrust of anything too happy” and a realization that she was in “the underbelly of the animal.”
Since re-emerging Her most notable collaborations have included background vocals on Bat For Lashes Mercury Prize nominated album The Bride and a 2022 solo tour with Rachael Yamagata.
The album can be streamed at all leading music providers: https://streamlink.to/entelechy
