“Stith’s music has always held a diaphanous quality, but here the airiness feels more effortless than melancholy.” So we wrote of DM Stith‘s Fata Morgana back in 2023, an album released via Historical Fiction Records which saw the Rochester-based singer-songwriter and visual artist team up with producer Thomas Bartlett to create a distinctly introspective sound via impressionistic tones and subtle pop sensibilities. “I made Fata Morgana after a prompt from a film maker who asked me to write a song for her short film about suicide,” Stith explains:
How does one approach that subject? How does one create something that speaks to the most difficult parts of being human: isolation, shame, exhaustion? I’m no stranger to these feelings. I decided to create a sort of sacred space for reflection and acceptance. It struck me that the decision to end a life is a request to relinquish, somehow, time itself.
Single ‘Dodges & Feints’ was a good introduction to this mood. A bright yet cryptic song which lived up to its title in its shifting ambiguity, though Stith’s searching vocals added a clear intention to proceedings. Ultimately, the sound of an artist willing to trust their listeners with the full conflicting tangle of interior emotions.
Reach for me
Even as I run away
And I will dodge and feint
It’s just how the game is played
Now DM Stith has returned with Flowers & Monks, an EP of previously unreleased material recorded during the Fata Morgana sessions. The record serves as a supplement or postscript to the full album, as well as a complete release in its own right. Three new tracks follow a new string version of previous single ‘The Oracle’, which sees Marla Hansen join on viola to elevate an already intricate, evocative arrangement to new heights. The result feels like the spirit of this stage of DM Stith’s career distilled. Where uncertainty is used not as some clouding force but rather a path towards a more honest mode of communication.
Feels like moving backwards
Even as you stand in place
Oh, ask the oracle anything
How will I know?
