Gigi Perez has always written songs like someone with a guitar in her lap but the world on her shoulders. On her stunning, self-produced debut LP At The Beach, In Every Life, the Cuban-American singer, songwriter, and producer invites us deep into her inner sanctum, a place that’s poetic and steeped in emotion.

The catalyst for At The Beach, In Every Life is heartbreakingly personal - the death of Gigi’s older sister, Celene. Her voice, literal and spiritual, threads through the album like a ghostly guide, with voice memos from Celene anchoring the record’s most vulnerable moments. Tracks like “Fable” and the breakout single “Sailor Song” don’t just recount grief, they swim through it, floating somewhere between remembrance and resurrection. As Perez says, “I have been loved through my grief.” And it shows.

But At The Beach, In Every Life doesn’t wallow in its own pity. It’s the sound of an artist breaking open and rebuilding in real time. The songs are intimate, built on stripped-down acoustic guitar, soft-edged production, and melodies that flicker like candlelight. There’s no pretension here, just blunt, beautiful honesty. On “Please Be Rude” and “Normalcy,” she pulls no punches, asking hard questions about faith, longing, and what it means to keep going when everything changes.

The road to this moment was hardly smooth. After leaving Berklee during the pandemic, signing to a major label, and then getting dropped, Perez returned home to South Florida and started from scratch. But instead of retreating, she taught herself how to produce, recorded the album on her own terms, and emerged with something even more powerful. “This is the album I needed to hear when I was 20,” she reflects. And for anyone moving through the mess of mourning or the madness of love, At The Beach, In Every Life feels like exactly that. A companion… and a comfort.