It’s been seven years since Detroit singer and songwriter Stef Chura released her last album, Midnight. Plenty of dramatic and life-altering things happened in those seven years: She broke off an engagement, she left Detroit for New Orleans (and then Louisville), she gave birth to her first child, she ultimately returned to Detroit. But those events are not the true story of Dancing Alone on the Concrete, her third album and second for Saddle Creek. The true story of this album—the experience that gives it its thematic and aesthetic shape—is more simple than that.

“For most people who create art I would assume there is some kind of deep unanswerable hole in your soul as to why you’re making it…” So says Stef Chura ahead of the release of Midnight, her gritty, vehement album released in 2019 – recorded and produced by Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest – a collection of songs for the Saddle Creek label. Illuminating that search for answers with a fevered sense of exploration, Midnight is a bold leap forward from Messes, Stef’s contagious debut album, with every aspect of her new work finding bold ways to express itself as it rips through twelve restless and relentless tracks.

A couple of years on from the release of Messes, Stef is still based in Detroit, that most singular city which has seen it all, from the no-mans-land of its initial collapse through to the resurgent place it is now. Stef found inspiration from the people she surrounded with herself with, more so than the place itself. It’s no surprise that Midnight is testament to those kind of characteristics; a rugged and robust burst of defiance.