After a long hiatus, moving to a new city, navigating a pandemic, and grappling with the reality of continuing to make music, Southern noir rock band Vexine didn’t think their latest record “The Light and the Dark in Everything” would ever see the light of day.

“The album took almost seven years to write,” says lead vocalist Sarah Frances Santamaria. “We had three songs in the bag before we even moved, but we didn’t know what was going to happen with them. We finally decided we couldn’t let this stuff die on the vine.”

Sarah, along with guitarist Paul Pearce, bassist Michael Skiffington, and drummer Jorge Santamaria, formed the alt-country band, The Velvet Marias, in 2007 before changing to a more Southern noir rock style as Vexine in 2012. The band released three albums and performed regularly around the city, including a spot at the Richmond Folk Festival in 2015. The group split in 2019 when Sarah and Jorge moved to Jorge’s hometown of New Orleans, but made their way back in 2022, knowing they needed to get the band back together.

Style Weekly talked with Vexine about reuniting, how the album almost wasn’t made, and where they go from here.

Style Weekly: The band went through a lot of changes while making this new album. What was the process like when you decided to finally release it?

Sarah Frances Santamaria: While we were still in New Orleans, we did a couple of Zoom calls, sharing stuff we were working on. And when we got back to Richmond, we started doing band sessions just to play again. Next thing you know, we’re actively working on new songs and the album quickly came together.

Jorge Santamaria: When we moved away, it felt like the end of the band for good. Then the pandemic just wore us all out. We were all separated and dealing with a lot of things emotionally and physically. We wondered if we were ever going to write songs again, so we really had to overcome distance and mortality.

Paul Pearce: At the time, I was dealing with depression and would go to this gloomy place of “What does it matter?” “I’m playing songs for people who don’t know me. Why should they care about it?” But when we started playing these songs again, it was like the piece that I had been missing was back.

Does the title “The Light and the Dark in Everything” hold a lot of significance?

Sarah: Yeah, this record is definitely a different feel from our previous work, and the title really fits into that. It’s a much more personal perspective of the light and dark in our life’s journey. We had to take a look at the things in our lives and see the good and bad.

Jorge: I think the difficulty Sarah and I experienced when moving to New Orleans is thinking it’s this wonderful place with great food and great culture, which it was, but once you’re actually living there, you realize it’s not always Mardi Gras. It was hard. We were missing our families and our bandmates and I think that influenced a lot of what Sarah wrote in the songs looking at how there’s two sides in things like that.

Your previous records were all self-produced, but this one you’re working with Shockoe Records. What was it like having a full record label this time around?

Paul: We did all the tracking in my studio, then took it down to In Your Ear Studios. Carlos Chafin did the mixing and the mastering on it. He went through and heard things we didn’t.

Jorge: From my perspective, it was just nice to have people that kind of got us out of our own head. When you’re producing something yourself, you listen to it and you’re like, “I really like what we’re doing here,” but when other people listen to it, they’re able to spot technical things we didn’t even consider. I think that helped bring the recordings to a whole new level.

Sarah: A lot of times I would ask them, “Should we change this or do this?” And they were like, “It’s great like it is. Don’t change anything.” It was kind of validating to have that reaction. But it’s nice to have this as a completed work. A lot of times you don’t get that luxury. It feels really good. We’ve had this in our brains for almost seven years and Shockoe helped us get there.

The band is now back together, so what’s next? 

Paul: Playing gigs. Playing lots of gigs. We’ve had so much fun recently going back and playing old stuff from the Velvet Marias days. Some of those songs really hold up.

Sarah: I’m writing again. I’ve put words down on paper. We haven’t met up yet on that, but we will. (To bandmates) Sorry, boys. Back to work.

Vexine performs at Starr Hill Brewery’s Mardi Gras celebration on Saturday, Feb. 21 alongside the Ham Biscuits. For more on Vexine, visit vexine.net.