Pictoria Vark’s forthcoming sophomore LP, Nothing Sticks (out March 21st, 2025 on Get Better Records) welcomes new beginnings for both listeners and the Chicago-based artist. After over 150 days on tour in 2022 as her debut album, The Parts I Dread was released, Victoria Park felt untethered, as if simultaneously living two separate realities. “I was 23 and thrust into an abnormal, chaotic, and very public way of living immediately after graduating college with an underdeveloped support network,” she says. “Focusing so heavily on playing live shows–these things with very explicit end dates–made me question if I was right to center my life around something so fleeting, until I realized everything is fleeting.” So she embarked on a journey to encapsulate that feeling through her dynamic, bass guitar-led sound: “This album is a reflection on the way all things end through the lens of being a musician.” As Park assembled a team of producers including herself, Gavin Caine, and Bradford Krieger, Nothing Sticks started to form. Whereas The Parts I Dread was recorded remotely during lockdown, the tracks on Nothing Sticks were taken to Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, RI with head engineer Krieger (Horse Jumper of Love, IAN SWEET). Their combined strengths allowed them to have a focused energy as a production team: multi-instrumentalist Caine served as the primary arranger, Park acted as the executive producer and main vocal producer, and Krieger brought his understanding of the space and gear to influence performances and sound palettes. The result is a sharper sound boasting organic performances and incisive, detailed lyrics. “Everything we want to last, whether it’s a relationship, a moment, a career, or a way of life, will come to an inevitable end. While dark at first glance, I find it to be a more neutral statement; only when we accept it as a fact of life can we imbue our time on Earth with more meaning,” she states. An exploration of the transient nature of life and relationships, her hope is that Nothing Sticks will help listeners let go of things more easily; to realize that life is too short to force things into places that aren’t working; to have more compassion for oneself and others for trying to hold on. But while everything is fleeting, everything on Nothing Sticks adheres together in a captivating, concrete, purposeful way—showing the beauty in inevitability and instability.