Today, Portland-based musician Mary Eliza releases her debut album, Spider. Written and recorded in collaboration with Preston Cochran (Lucy Dacus, Illuminati Hotties) and Jake Finch (boygenius, Ashe, Suki Waterhouse) at Trace Horse Studios in Nashville, she turns inward to explore the realities of her chronic illnesses. Mary Will play a short run of shows in the PNW in January, dates below.  Listen to Spider, out now, here.

On “Dogs” — the opening track of the record — we hear an economy of focused, intense energy with a simple verse –> verse –> chorus structure. The inherent delicateness in Mary’s voice is an unlikely but valiant messenger for a message so insightful and savagely intimate: “Even though the dogs are rippin’ trash up in the street, it doesn’t have to feel like that when you’re with me.” A buzzing bass fills out the track like you’re standing next to a subwoofer and feel it in your chest; a guitar so distorted and fluid it could be a theremin opens up the record with a lyrical line so assuredly ghostly you can’t help but usher yourself into the rest of the rooms it haunts thorughout the record.

Of “Dogs,” Mary Eliza says, “When I wrote it, it felt that the focus in the song was scratching at an end goal, a lasting love, but I now feel that it holds a light to the existence of love that I was experiencing at the time, and the beauty of caring so deeply for someone, regardless of the outcome. It’s incredible to me that a song can greet you just as kindly in such different phases of life.”

Watch the video for “Dogs,” by Katie Oscar, here.

While writing the record, Mary Eliza listened to a lot of Mali Velasquez’s new record I’m Green, Big Thief’s Masterpiece, Mitski’s The Land is Inhospitable and so are we, and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; you can hear each bit and piece that resonated from within the ever-unpredictable turns throughout Spider – a record intended to surprise. That is, in part, because life for Mary Eliza must be taken moment by moment, given the struggle with a mystery illness she’s contended with since she was 4 years old. She only got the full diagnosis this year: a heart disorder called POTS, a connective tissue disorder called hEDS, 4 tick-borne illnesses, Lyme Disease, and a rare blood disorder.

Needing to spend several hours per week in the hospital, every day is drastically different for her; “It has ended many relationships in my life and I’m sure it will continue to weed out fake friends. My anger and processing around this illness and the medical system as a whole has come out a lot in the making of this record, and it has felt like such a cathartic experience being able to create the soul scratching feeling that I experience in sound.”

Spider is acutely observant, thoughtful, mindful, curious… a testament to the person Mary Eliza is. It is about love and quiet strength. It is about brokenness. It is about loudness in devotion to self and unabashed healing. Mary harvested each of these songs from a root that sits deep inside herself, a place that she has lived her whole life to nourish. In a tiny house in central Oregon, quieted by snow up to the window panes, the songs on this record came alive. Mary knew that she needed to sit with the overwhelming emotions of grief, acceptance, anger, and love, and let them warm in front of the fireplace and thaw. So she did just that. Spider is not only a demonstration of honesty, but it is also a movement towards slowness and unapologetic love. One of the last lines on the record sums it up when she sings, “I am a slow mover, dear, I’m gonna move slowly, I’m gonna be happy.”

MARY ELIZA LIVE 2025
Jan 16th – The Showdown in Portland, OR
Jan 18th – Hybrid Gallery in Eugene, OR
Jan 19th – Volcanic Theatre in Bend, OR
Jan 30th – Tractor Tavern in Seattle, WA