Album: “Save As”
Artist: Ex:Re
Label: 4AD
Release date: 30 October 2026
In a 2018 interview, Elena Tonra described her debut solo album as one of heartbreak and catharsis. Nearly a decade on, her second album “Save As” is perhaps more heartbreak and healing, with all the vulnerability, shame, revelation and setbacks that refuse to follow a clear, steady trajectory towards stability of mind and body.
The London-based singer-songwriter emerged in the indie music scene in 2010 as the singer for Daughter, a trio formed with bandmates, Igor Haefeli and Remi Aguilella. The band won attention on the London live scene, blogs, and the BBC. I want to admit that I was neither aware of, let alone a fan of, Daughter before I discovered Ex:Re. With the shimmering, deeply enveloping world of “Save As”, I suspect Elena Tonra will be a revelatory discovery for many listeners who were not long-time fans of Daughter. To my ear, in Ex:Re there’s a legacy of Fiona Apple’s mid-90s grungy alt-pop guitar ballads, Cat Power’s melancholic folk-pop, and Warpaint’s synthy, percussive dreamscapes.
Tonra’s debut album under Ex:Re was the classic breakup album, detailing the hollow-chested panic of loneliness, drunken early mornings, rehashing every minor argument, regretting things said and done in haste, and then finding reassurance in the daily grind of rebuilding independence.
By 2023, Tonra had the skeletons of songs she’d been scribbling and sounding out over the previous few years. She took them to Fabian Prynn, who produced her debut album, and the process of creating a full-bodied album began. The first single, “Radio Station” sets the tone. It hits the heartstrings immediately with an acoustic intro, sleepily dancing in a melancholy minor chord. There’s a pent-up, slowly drawn-out frustration and pensiveness that unravels gradually over an extended Californian roadtrip in which Tonra laments her inability to clarify her own thoughts. She is, she admits in a lilting chorus, “a changing radio station”. There’s plenty of drama, without grandeur, in the gorgeous directness and intimacy of Tonra’s voice. There’s no soaring solo guitar and sudden thrash of drums to announce a third verse – leave that to the 20-year-olds and their nostalgic, grunge-inspired pop chart hits. Subtlety reigns in Ex:Re’s compositions, and it’s captivating.
From California to London and Paris, songs were written on tour and personal trips over years, and “Save As” is all the better for not being a concept album, but one that tells a story of how break-ups, rebounds, regret and revelation come not in a coherently structured timeline, but over years and cycles. “Sleep”, penned in a Paris hotel room, sounds deceptively like spoken-word poetry in a sing-song, lullaby voice. Gradually a subtle percussive momentum carries Tonra’s sweet, somnambulant vocals over a trippy beat. It reminded me of Warpaint’s dreamy, hypnotic electronic folk concoctions, or perhaps, the xx.
If the first two singles are lamenting, however danceable “Sleep” is, there’s an urgency to “Am I Even Real?” that sounds like a 4am fever dream. It is the sudden realisation, alone in an empty bed, that “it’s only me ... am I even real?”
Tonra narrates the common break-up self-talk. Was it my fault? Was that the moment things truly fell apart? What’s it going to take to get through the bleakness of this car-crash of emotions? Will I ever be loved again? Do I matter if I’m not seen and lusted for by someone?
Though heartbreak and loneliness may not sound like fabulous fodder for an incredibly melodic, hummable album that earworms into your mind and plays on repeat all day, then think of all the pop songs built on breaking up and moving on. Kylie Minogue and Destiny’s Child can attest, nothing makes you want to let loose on the dancefloor more than the desperation for ecstatic, emotional recovery. With “Save As”, Tonra has valiantly unbound her journals, her late night realisations, conversations she both entertained and overheard, seeking icecream in the wake of a breakup, in all her candour and fearlessness. The sound is shaped by a sea of synths, pared-back blendings of acoustic and electric guitar, subtle, momentous percussion, and the simplicity and humanity of humans in a studio together. For all the clever, graceful combination of live instruments and electronic flourishes, at its heart, one woman’s beautiful voice carries this album, and our fragile hearts, through grief to acceptance. Catharsis, though? Perhaps that’s the next album.
Header image from Ex:Re’s performance on the BBC Radio 6 Live Music Room, courtesy of YouTube.
