By 10 years in the making, Julianna Riolino’s ALL BLUE was a lifetime of thoughts and ideas colliding into some of the prettiest, sharpest alt-country tunes released all decade. It was an album bursting with colorful personality (even if sometimes that color was blue).
With her 2025 follow-up, ECHO IN THE DUST, you can palpably sense those many hurried thoughts beginning to settle. Riolino’s assuredness as a songwriter and performer can be felt in every note, from big, soaring ballads like “Be Good To Your Mother” to dusty radio dispatches like “Smile.” Nestled near the end of the tracklist, “I Wonder’ sees Riolino traversing the bitter Canadian tundra via a swelling, organ-led rock tune with cinematic guitar solos fitting for the climax of a big Western blockbuster; “No longer will you speak my name,” she angrily spits. The whole record is defined by her emboldened, intense vocal performances, each song a display of confidence that feels like growth from ALL BLUE to now.
ECHO IN THE DUST is seeing a deluxe edition of the album out this Friday with a handful of excellent bonus tracks, including the cooing, pedal steel-forward “Don’t Put Me in the Middle” and fuzzy, spaced-out highlight “Would That It Were So Simple.” We have the full deluxe premiering below, including the unreleased cut “Pain,” a mysterious and primordial piece of songwriting filled with muted trumpets and saxophones that is unlike anything else Riolino’s released to date. “‘Pain’ is the salve for feelings of grief, loss, and helplessness,” she says. “The song is meant to guide the listener like the psychopomp we hear about in ancient folklore. I wrote this song as a way to process the pain of someone leaving their earthly body and moving onto the next realm. The end result created a hair-raising but warm comfort, like the valkyrie’s song, or the siren’s wail … rocking you gently into a dream.”
You can hear “Pain,” as well as the full deluxe version of ECHO IN THE DUST, below!
Be sure to grab a copy of the record over on Bandcamp, and you can follow Riolino over on Instagram!
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