Buffalo-bred singer-songwriter Lexxi Raine is an expert in translating emotion into song. On her latest offering, “Aisle 32B (Denial),” she leads her listeners on a heart-wrenching trip through the first stages, perhaps the most inevitable process of letting go. The song serves as the introductory chapter of her daring new EP, "The Grief Case," which taps into the six volatile stages of post-breakup survival, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Murder, and Acceptance. Yes, even Murder, because sometimes the only way to assimilate heartbreak is to let your blackest humor up to the mic.
“Aisle 32B (Denial)” starts as a frozen instant of delusive hope. In one of the many vivid scenes in which Raine ropes us into a story, she steps onto a plane and asserts to herself that he’s going to materialize at the 11th hour to prevent her from leaving. Her vocals gleam with a combo of tenderness and desperation, grabbing at that precariously balmy edge of someone still trading in reality. Then, as the turbulence rocks the aircraft, the metaphor broadens because it’s not the plane that’s the shake machine, it’s the gut-punch realization that he never tried at all to hang onto her.
The single envelops that emotional turmoil in a soundscape that’s soaring and intimate. Raine’s voice steers the storytelling with lucidity and warmth, as the instrumentation floats her narrative skyward, only to tug it back to earth with the gravity of heartbreak. The song’s swagger perfectly mirrors the denial storm that’s raging inside of you, calm on the surface, though fraying underneath.
What makes “Aisle 32B (Denial) so compelling is Raine’s skill at making grief striking without sacrificing its human messiness. We have all had those moments, moments of waiting and watching, of convincing ourselves that a person whom we loved would fight for us. What Raine does is bottle up that universal ache and pour it into a song that simultaneously feels very personal, and yet so human it could be about a well, about a heartbreak.