Wallice has announced her highly anticipated debut album The Jester (Dirty Hit) out November 15th. The LA native has come out swinging, with a double single singles “Heaven Has To Happen” & “The Opener.”

“Heaven Has to Happen,” is a confession about suffering from imposter syndrome even while you’re living your dream. “How many more jokes can I make before the wool gets pulled out from over my eyes?” Wallice sings just before a brief, mid-song outburst of distorted bass.

“The Opener” sets the stage for The Jester for Wallice, who in April 2023, found herself on stages in arenas full of strangers. The Los Angeles songwriter was on the other side of the world, playing shows to 10,000 or more people who had, in many cases, been standing in line for days to see their favorite band, The 1975. Wallice was the opener, playing the biggest shows of her life to crowds that mostly didn’t know her name. It was a thrill, of course, but there was dejection to it, too, to staring out at front rows of blank faces, struggling with the sleeplessness of a few days spent in line.

So Wallice did what songwriters do: She turned the uncanny experience into “The Opener,” the six-minute gambit of her first LP, The Jester. As the track moves from tender ballad to defiant rocker, she considers all the bad things she might say about her own art—a Radiohead rip-off, too innocent, too determined—and moves forward, anyway. “Gonna get what I deserve/I’m still the opener,” she roars in the final seconds, balancing future hopes with present conditions across a razor wire of howling guitars.

This push and pull between expectation and actuality animate much of The Jester, Wallice’s ultra-dynamic and charged 14-song debut. Though Wallice has been writing songs since she was a preteen playing cello and releasing them for almost as long, her career took shape during the last four years, when a series of singles and EPs suggested her as a new chronicler of early adulthood’s struggles and delights.

The Jester is a bold and expansive debut album from an artist ready to make her move.

Photo Courtesy: Monika Oliver