Meg & Dia - happysad (Deluxe Edition) (2020)

There was a time when neither Meg nor Dia Frampton thought they'd ever play together again. The sisters - two of six - had spent over eleven years making music together as Meg & Dia, and between 2004 and 2012, their emotive, soul-searching songs made their name in the indie and alternative rock scene. In that time period, they expanded to a five-piece, released four albums, and toured with the likes of Anberlin, Bayside, Saves The Day, The Plain White T's, Angels & Airwaves, Dashboard Confessional, New Found Glory and Sugarcult. They also completed three summers on the Vans Warped Tour and its short-lived, UK kind-of equivalent, Give It A Name. In 2011, in an effort to promote that year's fourth independently released album, Cocoon, Dia appeared as a competitor on the first season of The Voice and finished as the runner-up. That led to a record deal as a solo artist and later that same year the first album under her own name was released, something which inadvertently drove a wedge between her and her sister. In 2012, under the name Dia Frampton, the band supported country star Blake Shelton on a US arena tour, but it was soon after that that they went their separate ways. "Meg and I really split up on the last day of that tour," says Dia. "She just said 'I can't do this anymore' and I remember falling to the ground and balling my eyes out. After that, we didn't talk hardly at all and there was this weird tension for maybe eight years, where we'd give each other a stiff hug at family gatherings and then gratefully turn our attention to our other sisters. But eventually we did go to therapy together, because even though we weren't getting along, we both wanted to get along."Fast-forward to the start of 2019, and the sisters are not just preparing to head back out on Warped Tour this summer, but are gearing up to release Happysad. It's the album neither of them thought they'd ever make, but it's one that not only finds their friendship rekindled, but their creative spark reignited and their musical horizons