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Alexandria Maillot Explores the Weight of Memory on “Cherry Pit”
Updated: Aug 14
Vancouver-based artist Alexandria Maillot has released “Cherry Pit,” the latest single from their forthcoming album Cryptomnesia. Blending baroque alt-pop with dream pop, indietronica, psychedelia, and alternative R&B, the new track offers another look into Maillot’s signature “swoon rock” sound.
Raised on Vancouver Island and now based in Vancouver, Maillot has spent years building a catalog rooted in immersive songwriting and cinematic production. On “Cherry Pit,” that approach becomes particularly introspective as they examine the memories and emotions that remain long after a relationship, chapter, or former version of ourselves has ended.
The song’s central metaphor is deceptively simple. Like the pit left behind after eating a cherry, certain memories remain even after the sweetness surrounding them is gone. Maillot doesn’t attempt to package that experience into a clean story of heartbreak and healing. Instead, “Cherry Pit” sits comfortably within the contradiction, exploring how nostalgia can simultaneously comfort us and reopen old wounds.
Lush synths and hypnotic grooves create a dreamlike backdrop for Maillot’s gritted, nuanced vocals, allowing the production to feel expansive without overpowering the song’s emotional core. There’s an almost cinematic quality to the track, making its reflections on love, loss, vulnerability, and growth feel bigger with every listen.
“Cherry Pit” continues an already notable run for Maillot, whose music has received support from CBC Music and SiriusXM and appeared in productions from Netflix, Fox/Hulu, MTV, Hallmark, and Syfy. They were also nominated for Breakout Artist of the Year at the 2020 Western Canadian Music Awards.
With Cryptomnesia on the horizon, “Cherry Pit” suggests Maillot is entering one of their most experimental and emotionally compelling chapters yet.
What drew you to the idea of memory as the emotional foundation for “Cherry Pit”?
Cherry Pit came when I was working through a pretty difficult time in my life. Much like looking back on a memory, your body doesn't always know where to place it. Your relationship to a memory can change over time, like how an embarrassing moment can lighten into a funny recollection or a harrowing event can become an impressive anecdote dished out at dinner parties. Some memories fade entirely while others stick to you like dried spackle bubbling under paint.
Cherry Pit is very much about the pit in your stomach that grows after experiencing a type of hurt that takes years of distance to heal from, and the various methods one attempts to stop the bleed in the interim.
The song explores nostalgia as something that can be both comforting and painful. How did you translate that tension into the songwriting and production?
Tension is something I always look at exploring in a song, largely in pursuit of a release that feels earned. I always imagine a song as if I am casting a fishing lure into the water; There is a moment of calm, and then suddenly, there's a tugging. In that moment, your senses are activated, and you become ever present in the world. The role of tension in music is much like the pulling on a fishing rod from something alive on the end of its hook. The tension and the release, the strike and the catch, it all feels a bit like a dance.
One of my favorite songs that plays with tension in an incredibly impactful way is Lark by Angel Olsen. "To forget you is to hide / There is still so much left to recover." The strings ebb and flow throughout, tension and release over and over until it culminates in a massive crescendo, with strings that feel like water splashing ferociously. By the end of the song, my cheeks are rarely ever dry. It's a beautiful song about grief and loss and heartache, all told from a very thoughtful and unassuming place. The choreography of it all is achingly perfect.
“Cherry Pit” blends dream pop, psychedelia, indietronica, and R&B. How has your approach to genre evolved while creating Cryptomnesia?
The album is a bit of a vegetable medley in that it leans into all of those elements in more defined ways, whereas on previous albums, I felt an internalized pressure to pick a single genre and make it the focal lens. To continue with the food analogy, previous releases have felt like the ingredients were puréed, like a tomato bisque. Whereas, for Cryptomnesia, the ingredients are more roughly chopped, like a minestrone... Now I'm hungry.
You’ve described your sound as “swoon rock.” What does that term mean to you, and how does “Cherry Pit” represent where that sound is heading?
Swoon Rock for me means the music has dynamic elements and heightened emotional moments. Catharsis is a key component, which translates to less compression and more headroom in the mix to allow for the song to have a dynamic arc. Story is important, which I often find comes out observational and rooted in curiosity over anything particularly certain, even if the music sounds to be of a strong conviction. As a genre, I think it describes the emotional stakes of a song and the cinematic elements that complement its narrative.
As “Cherry Pit” introduces listeners further into the world of Cryptomnesia, what can we expect from the album that we haven’t heard from you before?
This is the first album where I’ve sat in the producer’s seat for a number of the songs, as well as in the engineer’s chair. You can expect to hear my slightly-above-sub-par drumming on a track or two, my partner Daniel’s journey learning to play a pocket trumpet, and possibly a couple of expletives buried deep within the mix to convey the technological woes one experiences when producing an album out of their small home studio to keep the whole thing feeling immersive.
