Halifax’s Eliza Rhinelander finds her voice on debut album

“I don’t know where I’m going to,” Eliza Rhinelander sings on “Massachusetts,” the earnest and clear-voiced opener to the Halifax singer-songwriter’s debut album, The Precipice. “And I’ve never had this much to lose.” Given the 19-year-old folk singer’s trajectory this past year—from a crowdfunded EP to a sold-out show at The Carleton earlier this month—it would seem Rhinelander has at least once answer, or rather, a clear direction: upward. The young artist just released her debut album on Feb 9, and it’s the kind of record that feels like warm sunshine on a winter morning.

Rhinelander calls The Precipice a “coming-of-age story.” She wrote the 12-track album during the transition from her Grade 12 year to her first year of university at Dalhousie and King’s. It was a time when Rhinelander wasn’t sure whether she’d stick around in Halifax, she tells The Coast. She’d spent the first three years of her life in Massachusetts—her dad is a New Englander—and she’d held onto “really fond memories” of her life in the state before her family made the move to Nova Scotia. The tug-of-war between her two homes became the inspiration for her album’s opener.

“Growing up, I always thought, ‘As soon as I’m old enough, I’m gonna go right back [to Massachusetts] and [pick up] all of these things that I feel like I left behind,’” she says, speaking by phone with The Coast. “And then when I was actually at that moment where I could go to school in the States and make the big move that I’d been saying I wanted to do for however many years… I thought about how much I had here and how much I really love it—and how much I would be losing if I made that choice.”

It’s a great song—catchy and effortless, like an early-career Taylor Swift, if the country singer-turned-pop star had grown up in the salt-tinged Maritimes instead of woodsy Pennsylvania. And it’s far from the only highpoint on The Precipice, which sees Rhinelander return to frequent collaborator and producer Silas Bonnell. The opener’s follow-up, “Know Better,” is an introvert’s anthem and love song that gets a lift from a stirring violin arrangement. “Wasting My Time” is another highlight, in which Rhinelander teams up with Halifax country crooner Taylor Jensen for a breakup song that manages to feel both hopeful and fresh.

“I’ll only write a song if I have an ‘in’ for the feeling that it’s about,” Rhinelander says.

Recorded at Bonnell’s home studio in Dartmouth, The Precipice already feels like a musical evolution for the 19-year-old songwriter, who released her debut EP, Good Old Days, last May after raising more than $3,500 on Kickstarter to cover its production costs. With the EP, Rhinelander says, “I didn’t know much about production and the ways that it can be used for storytelling.” In recording The Precipice, she adds, she and Bonnell were “a lot more open to trying things that are more out there and going with each other’s crazy ideas.” That includes introducing a harmonica on “Know Better,” using it to mimic laughter.

The album also gave Rhinelander the chance to live out a dream—collaborating with Jade Bennett. The Halifax-based power vocalist and guitarist joins Rhinelander on “Silver Screen,” a spirited duet that manages to bring the best out of both artists. Rhinelander says she “absolutely fell in love” with Bennett’s music after the Dartmouth pop-punk singer and 2023 Best Solo Artist runner-up headlined the first-ever show that Rhinelander was paid to perform at.

Sold-out show at The Carleton

Rhinelander is still buzzing from her most recent show, a sold-out album release party at The Carleton on Feb 9. Even in the blustery cold and February snow, the Argyle Street bar was packed. The night “couldn’t have gone any better,” Rhinelander tells The Coast.

“I got to chat with people after and hear which songs had really gotten to them, which they really liked,” she says. “We even had some cancellations the day of, because it was really snowy and some people were driving up from the South Shore… so we put those tickets back on sale and they sold out again almost immediately.”

Not bad for an artist who’s still at the beginning of her career—though school comes first, she says. These days, Rhinelander is a student at Dalhousie and King’s, combining theatre studies with early modern studies. This April, she’ll join her friend and producer Bonnell at a Food For The Ears charity concert in support of Feed Nova Scotia at the Light House Arts Centre. She says there’s been “some talk” of future house concerts as well.

“For the meantime,” Rhinelander says, “I’m just really ecstatic to have The Carleton show go so well and for the album to connect with people. People seem to really like it, and that’s really wonderful.”