New York singer-songwriter Alwyn Morrison is pushing beyond romantic heartbreak on his forthcoming sophomore EP, Trial, arriving October 23.
Developed from almost 90 songs, the four-track project explores betrayal, inherited pain, self-defence and survival through a darker strain of alternative rock.
Its structure follows the stages of a legal proceeding an idea partly shaped by Morrison’s time supporting friends inside a New York courtroom during 2025.
The announcement arrives alongside videos for the EP’s opening tracks, Puzzle Piece and Everybody Bleeds. Both songs expand the raw, guitar-driven foundations of his debut EP, Heartsplit, with atmospheric electronics and traces of new wave and Britpop.
Mixed by Alex Aldi and mastered by Nathan Dantzler, Trial was largely recorded between Flint, Michigan and Los Angeles, with Morrison taking a deeper role in its production.
Sometimes, I feel like I can only move on from a song once it’s out there, and it’s no longer mine.
Q1. You wrote nearly 90 songs between 2024 and the making of Trial. What was it about these four songs that kept pulling you back to them, and when did you realize they belonged together as a single body of work?
I wrote many songs over the past few years without thinking too much about whether or not I would ever release them. It’s fascinating to me that many artists will go into the studio for a couple of weeks to write and record a full album.
As an independent artist, that’s borderline impossible due to all the time and financial constraints. I didn’t just write down almost a thousand ideas or lyrics. By the end of last year, I had written, recorded, and mixed so many songs that I did not include on my first EP. These new songs felt like a chapter in which I looked at life from a non-romantic perspective.
Until recently, heartbreak was the main engine behind my creativity, and these songs felt like a step in a different direction. I was so ready for that. Sometimes, I feel like I can only move on from a song once it’s out there, and it’s no longer mine.
Also, my involvement in the production of the songs grew as I collaborated with more people. These songs were the ones I kept listening to and mixing over and over again with my collaborators. They just felt like a body of work I was really proud of, so I decided to release them as an EP.
Q2. Your debut Heartsplit was praised for balancing intimate, diary-like songwriting with huge, anthemic moments. With Trial, you’re moving into a darker and more modern rock sound, especially on Puzzle Piece and Everybody Bleeds. What were you listening to or experimenting with in the studio that pushed you in this new direction?
That’s a great question. I actually wrote the songs on Trial before I wrote Heartsplit, but I recorded and produced them after Heartsplit came out. When I’m in the studio, I try not to listen to anything.
Especially when I’m recording or mixing the songs. I get obsessed with all the little details and try to avoid being influenced by what I might be listening to. I go for weeks without listening to any other artist. However, there’s a blend of new wave and Britpop influences that stems from my upbringing and ends up informing my creative decisions.
The Cure and Oasis are two of my biggest influences that come across sonically on these songs, more than on my previous work. When it comes to songwriting, I naturally gravitate towards country music, which is actually what I listen to the most these days. Kenny Chesney and Lainey Wilson are two of my favorites to put on in the morning.
Q3. You’ve said that your time in a New York City courtroom in 2025 found its way into Trial without you realizing it at first. How did that experience shape the way you approached the themes of betrayal, self-defense, and survival across the EP?
Being put “on trial” is a lyric from one of the songs on the EP. The song is called Monster and it’s essentially a coming-of-age story, where I wrote about something really difficult I went through when I was 19.
When I listened to these songs back-to-back, it felt like it all started with a rupture—the heartbreak—but then it grew into a story of perspective about life, reflections on the many tribulations we all go through, and a naive desire to be a child again, because life was so easy back then.
When I was working on the artwork for the vinyl, and the insert with the lyric sheet and other things, I thought about naming this project Trial and started looking at each song as a chapter or stage of a real trial. That was simply a funny idea in the beginning, but it ended up resonating with me as something very real. The songs take me on a journey from feeling betrayed to feeling judged, until—with time—some sort of resolution comes.
Rather than presenting its emotional conflicts as neatly resolved, Trial places them in sequence and lets each song function like a piece of evidence.
That structure gives Morrison’s heavier sound a clear dramatic purpose while documenting his move beyond the romantic focus of Heartsplit.
Puzzle Piece and Everybody Bleeds are available now. Trial arrives October 23, 2026.