Sari Lightman Announces Solo Debut Album The Way I Saw You, Produced by Meg Duffy

Sari Lightman has spent years moving in tandem with her twin sister Romy through the psychedelic rock, pop, and folk projects Tasseomancy and Lightman & Lightman. Now she’s stepping out on her own. Her solo debut, The Way I Saw You, arrives next month, with Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy behind the production. Duffy also played on the 2024 Lightman & Lightman album Sister Smile, so this isn’t exactly a fresh collision of names, but it does mark a new frame around Lightman’s writing.

The album’s title track is out today, and it opens the record with a haze of wispy melodies and celestial harmonies. It’s an eerie, earthy folk song that should make sense to listeners drawn to Bedouine and Jessica Pratt, or to the older English folk touchstones like Bridget St. John. By the end, the title phrase has turned into something close to a mantra, less a hook than a spell you keep hearing repeated back.

Lightman says the song began with Eve Babitz, the journalist and writer whose later years were shaped by the aftermath of a disfiguring accident. In her own words, Lightman describes imagining Babitz from the perspective of a journalist sitting across from her, thinking about how badly someone can want to be remembered as they were on the page: “sensual and carefree.” From there, the writing moves into a more theological place, with Lightman following the rose into Dante’s Paradise and picturing the feminine saints hidden in its petals, “like an exquisitely scented sexy hotel.” As she puts it, “Let Eve live here” was the thought.

Tracklist:

01 “The Way I Saw You”
02 “The Prize”
03 “Day of the Just Cause”
04 “Girl Bitten By A Lizard”
05 “Etty”
06 “Give It All Up”
07 “Rose is In Greece”
08 “Soon Came The Evening”

The Way I Saw You is out 6/26 via Night Bloom Records. Pre-order it here.