From the very first notes of This Time, you know immediately that you’re already somewhere else. As the debut album by Los Angeles-based duo Sarah & Collin opens up, you sense that this is a journey – one that moves differently from what you might expect.
The duo invites you in closely. Not only through their intimate DIY performances in homes, backyards, and small, community-driven environments across L.A., but through the album itself – a deeply immersive body of work where voices, thoughts and textures merge into something fluid, almost intangible. Some tracks, like Well I Fell, carry a cinematic quality, creating images within images behind closed eyes. There’s a subtle tension throughout – between clarity and distortion, between presence and memory – that keeps pulling you deeper. Feeling the highs and lows of life within yourself, you find yourself in all of it.
A large part of their early collaboration did not happen in the studio, but in long conversations over coffee in West Adams, where they spent hours reflecting on timing – on how we move through moments, how the present stretches between past and future.
“This time is that liminal feeling. You looked to this time at some point in your past. And now that you’re here, you might say, “This Time I’ll…” again.“
For this album, however, the process shifted. Each artist wrote separately, bringing their ideas together only in the final recording phase. The vocals were recorded during a one-week trip to Bodega Bay – a raw coastal landscape that became a turning point in their creative process. They describe this time as something almost elusive; and when they returned to Los Angeles to finish the album, that exact feeling was hard to recreate, making those recordings all the more meaningful.
Two artists, two people, two inner worlds. The songs emerge from very different emotional landscapes. While Sarah’s writing is rooted in introspection, uncertainty and quiet observation, Collin created his material during what he describes as a darker phase – shaped by long nights and a sense of disorientation.
And yet, it all comes together. Because experiences overlap, emotions shift, transform and expand. Just like the songs themselves, moving between stillness and intensity, softness and urgency, never settling into one fixed state. The final song on the album, In Your Car, becomes a hopeful closing, gently reminding you that despite everything, there is always something beautiful to hold on to.
Released via Modern Entity, the label run by Chris Ward of Tropics, This Time marks a wonderful first chapter for the duo. And for us as listeners, it becomes a strangely intoxicating experience.
photography by Jenn Kang
Listen to the full album here: sym.ffm.to/this_time
Follow Sarah & Collin for more:
www.instagram.com/sarahcollinsarahcollin
