The music of Lean Year -- the indie duo of vocalist Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson -- dwells in hushed, meditative atmospheres built from sparse arrangements of traditional rock and orchestral instruments. The couple released their full-length debut, Lean Year, in 2017. The follow-up, 2022's Sides, re-teamed producers Alverson and Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings).

Rick Alverson emerged on the broader indie scene in the 1990s as leader of the Nick Cave- and Leonard Cohen-influenced Drunk. Beginning with 1997's To Corner Wounds, the band issued four albums on Jagjaguwar. Debuting with 2000's Leisure and Other Songs, Alverson's collaborative solo project, Spokane, likewise combined guitar and drums with instruments like piano, strings, and mallet percussion. Spokane released albums on Jagjaguwar throughout the 2000s, before Alverson made his directorial debut with 2010's The Builder, a film he co-wrote with Colm O'Leary. The writing team collaborated again on 2011's New Jerusalem and 2012's The Comedy, both with Alverson directing. His fourth feature-length film, 2015's Entertainment, was written instead with Tim Heidecker and lead actor Gregg Turkington, aka Neil Hamburger (other members of the cast included John C. Reilly and Michael Cera). In the meantime, he directed music videos for the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, and Oneohtrix Point Never.

Emilie Rex left her job at Indiana University and relocated from the Midwest to Alverson's longtime base of Richmond, Virginia, in the mid-2010s. The two soon formed Lean Year, with Rex's gentle melancholy vocal performances perfectly complementing Alverson's quietly cinematic music. A third component of Lean Year's spacious, haunting sound was Western Michigan-based Erik Hall, who co-produced the duo's eponymous debut album with Alverson. After signing with Western Vinyl, home of Hall's In Tall Buildings, the Lean Year LP saw release in October 2017. Hall also co-produced and played on the follow-up, September 2022's Sides. Partly informed by the loss of multiple close family members, it also included performances by Elliot Bergman (NOMO, Wild Belle), Joseph Shabason (Destroyer, the War on Drugs), and Matthew O'Connell (Chorusing). ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi