“I think when we listen to certain music, it feels like we’re in the game or film of our life. It brings it to life in a sense, and sometimes I can’t listen to music because it all feels so real. I just need silence because I can’t stand to feel the emotions of what it is to be here,” Julia Stone tells me about the soundtrack of Life is Strange: True Colors, the upcoming narrative adventure game that seeks to explore the themes of grief, empathy, and love from the perspective of a young heroine who must come to terms with the loss of her sibling.

Sibling duo Angus and Julia Stone’s music is almost synonymous with Life is Strange, with the beautifully melancholic ‘Santa Monica Dream’ accompanying a key scene in the original game where Chloe Price is smoking in her room, ruminating on the past, present, and future as life passes her by. It’s a bittersweet moment, and one of many in the beloved adventure game where music is integral to the experience. For Stone, it was just another request for their material to be used in a distant project, and its eventual impact in the years to come was more than a little unexpected.

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“When these requests come through, I read the email, watch the moment, and if it all seems appropriate then it’s fine [to use it],” Stone says. “Life goes on, but then like a year after the game came out, we had people coming up to us who had found out about our music through Life is Strange. That was interesting, because I remember being like, ‘I think I said yes to a game a couple of years ago?’ and now here are all these people, and they’re always really sweet and kind and that got me more curious about the game.”

Life is Strange

While Life is Strange: True Colors will feature other artists such as Novo Amor - and protagonist Alex’s singing voice was recorded by contemporary artist mxmtoon - the Stone siblings were tasked with scoring an original soundtrack to accompany the narrative, with songs composed for pivotal moments, characters, and locations in the game we’ll discover in the coming weeks. “I think straight away it was appealing as an idea,” Stone explains. “We had just finished touring with our previous record and we didn’t have any plans to work together for a while because we both had solo projects we wanted to work on. But this felt like a good way to do what we really like, which is being in the studio together.”

Stone doesn’t have a huge amount of knowledge about the games industry, describing herself as a “watcher” of the medium as opposed to someone who picks up the controller and jumps into things. However, this perspective was a valuable one for composing scores capable of providing a sense of distance from the mechanical side of things that not all internal musicians at larger studios might be afforded.

“As we asked more questions about the game the more it resonated [with us] as a good idea,” Stone says. “I loved that she struggled with managing her emotions and that her superpower was empathy. I thought that was such a cool premise for a game, and figuring out what happened to her brother and then losing him, it was such a relatable experience in a lot of ways. The themes of the game like grief and a sense of belonging, I think Angus and I felt they were a natural fit for our songwriting. We write a lot about belonging, family, home, and love, so it felt natural for us to say yes and jump on board, and that was three years ago.”

Life is Strange

Having a single song licensed for a moment in the first game is one thing, but composing an entire soundtrack is a drastically different endeavour. Stone describes the process as a mixture of familiar territory and unknown challenges, with themes the duo were accustomed to making it easier to slip into things. “Some parts of the [recording process] were very similar,” Stone says. “The way we write songs didn’t change that much. I guess the difference was that we started from a scene or a visual image that was presented to us. These Zen moments, like one where Alex is sitting at the end of the wharf and contemplating her choices, you know, this moment of reflection. We wanted the song to feel like this, and that was different because normally you’d start with the guitar part or an idea one of us has for a song.”

This streamlined creativity is a wonderful thing in its own way, with Stone saying that some of these songs would never have existed if it weren’t for these specific moments. “Had we not seen these moments, it would have been a completely different record, and I really love a lot of these songs,” Stone tells me. “Other songs already existed in our minds, like ones we were writing that never landed. We’d be like, ‘Hey, this moment where Alex is just sitting on the roof trying to figure out what’s going on, why don’t we put Tears to that because that would feel really cool, and we’ll change some of the lyrics?’ Angus and I write all of the time, so we had a lot of songs catalogued we could go through and see if they matched up with the story.”

Life is Strange

Life is Strange’s music has always been a little sad. Melancholy and misery are the themes of the day, but they’re frequently interspersed with upbeat tracks that interweave a layer of hope into proceedings. Without this expertly curated music, none of the games would be the same, so I was curious to ask Stone about what brings her to such ideas in her songwriting. “I guess it’s a personality trait, I think I’ve always been drawn to a bit of melancholy,” Stone says. “I think having empathy at all, as a human - I think everyone has different versions of that and different ways in which it shows up. But I think it means that you’re sensitive to the world around you and how what happens impacts you. It can either be something that becomes extremely damaging or dysfunctional or it can be something that helps you grow and become a better human, for other people and yourself.

“Life isn’t easy, but it’s also beautiful that you love people, you lose them, and then you live a life where that loss just lives with you. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You’re never the same as these things happen, and you become a different person - and that’s good. I think there’s part of both Angus’s and my songwriting that accepts that part of being human, and how we’re okay with being a bit broken, it’s that what makes us unique. I think that’s what I love about Alex. She’s a bit broken, but it makes her special and it makes her who she is.”

Life is Strange

The agency of games provides a way for us to project ourselves onto experiences to come to terms with loss, empathise with characters, and recognise what makes us human, and Life is Strange: True Colors seems keen to address this. As Stone says as our chat draws to a close: “Music is so important and powerful in games. Like in life, the soundtrack brings out these moments and amplifies the beauty and rawness and all of that stuff. I think it’s integral to any kind of storytelling, and silence has a place as well because you need it to surround the sounds. That’s how music feels to me: I think it marks the moments in our life.”

Life is Strange: True Colors is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch on September 10.

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