Andrew Belle – ‘Dive Deep’ (album stream) (premiere)

Singer-songwriter Andrew Belle found critical acclaim with his 2013 sophomore album Black Bear. But just a year after that, Belle lost his voice for two months and had to confront the fear of losing music as the center point of his life. Luckily the vocal loss only lasted two months and Belle was able to persevere in penning his third album Dive Deep, which releases this Friday. Forced to take stock of his life and increasingly focused on domestic issues, Dive Deep shows Belle delving into his emotional depths to produce a set of songs relatable to anyone who has loved in their lives.

Belle tells PopMatters, “I’m really proud of this record. To me, it feels like the next logical step in the progression of my writing and the sound we’ve been narrowing in on over the past few years. I didn’t go into this project with a concept — the way that I did with Black Bear — but when it was done, I took a step back from it and realized that I wrote a lot about making decisions and moving past my doubts and fears. Each of us is given choices to make every day — many of which pit our comfort and security against our goals or our desires. Sometimes I get paralyzed by indecision, but then I remember that the best parts of my life have come from diving deep into the unknown when I wasn’t exactly sure how it would all turn out.”