Radio Heat has this idea baked into its very bones, Desiree Cannon holding the creation of songs as a kind of alchemical process. With a country-inflected style that reaches towards everything from dark pop and surf influences, Cannon brings an assortment of pain and doubt to the table in an attempt to transform it into something different. As though a song is a kind of machine able to transmute suffering into beauty, not only for the artist but the audience too.

Lead single and album opener, the title track is a door through which the listener is invited to witness this process in action. “I wished for a brighter start for you / Picturing day’s first light / Like a tide running over your door,” as Cannon sings with something like weary fondness. “Hot water on cold veins / When a soft beat drops like a screen / I know, and I know you’ve got it too.”

I can feel radio heat on
While you walk to my back I retreat
Now everytime before like
A box of matches in the sink on fire

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Described as an “experiment in limitations and creative self-control,” Shasta was recorded around a wood stove in a hillside studio in Big Sur, using solar energy to power a Tascam 388, with Thomas refusing to go beyond the eight available tracks. The process goes some way to explaining the record’s intimate tones, though instrumental opener ‘Ascension’ dispels any notion the self-imposed constraints might impact the sound’s richness. The opposite turns out to be true, as though in turning to simplicity Levi Thomas taps into some organic energy, an amalgamation of heat and shadow as drawn from sunlight, wood smoke, the rising warmth of the Californian night.

‘Sun God’ invokes these forces directly, a prayer to “rain and rock and sea,” to “feather, fur and gnashing teeth,” before ‘Wrecked’ offers the full vivid texture of cosmic country. The album sees Dominic Aiello (drums), Darwin Siegaldoud (bass, prepared organ, wurlitzer),  C.H. McCoy (piano, organ, wurlitzer), Nicholas Merz (pedal steel, backup vocals) and Kit Center (drum machine, percussion, backup vocals) lend their talents, and its the slow tracks like ‘Wrecked’ where this depth is most apparent. Thomas’s vocals drifting above the aching music like some spirit ascending above his body and looking down upon the sad view.

Elsewhere the sound changes energy, from the upbeat rhythm of ‘Concrete Buddha’ and its desperate memories to the taut simmer of ‘Trinity’ and its foreboding nighttime edge. ‘Dog Star’ draws upon elements of prog and psych rock in its slow build, playing out as something between Pink Floyd and Magnolia Electric Co., complete with Molina-esque lyrics of ritual release.

So take me back to Shady Grove
Sing me something sweet and slow
Cover me in Dogwood flowers and float me down the Finley
As above we‘ll be so low
Fire light descending

The track embodies the subtle change across the record, an instance where Levi Thomas starts to feel the reward for his prior rituals and embrace the situation’s sacred weight. A narrative thread which culminates in the closing title track. “A song seized by the sublime scale of the American West,” was how we described it in a preview. A “revelatory experience […] captured with a decidedly seventies style, equal parts classic country and cosmic psych which invites the listener into the moment, never losing control of its relaxed rhythms despite everything.” For though the doom-laden tone is never quite transcended, the conclusion finds Thomas in a more peaceful state, as though having come to relax into the end which is descending.

My mind left my body north on the five
And I feel like the last man alive

We could make the perfect sound
Fall like fire to the ground

Shasta is out now via The Long Road Society and available from the Levi Thomas Bandcamp page.

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Next February sees the release of Mikayla McVey’s debut album, Time Turns Everything, on The Long Road Society. The record features a whole cast of supporting musicians, with Mat Davidson (twain, Big Thief, Courtney Marie Andrews), Sam Doores (The Deslondes), Miles Lassi, Rebecca Marcyes, Alan Parker (Spacebomb), Molly Sarle (Mountain Man), Danny Vitali (Alex Bleeker, Kelly McFarling) and James Wallace all lending their talents to produce what the label describe as “a range of musical kaleidoscopes.” A sound as vivid as the moods it brings to life, one capable of collecting old heartbreak and despair and repurposing them into something as therapeutic as it is beautiful.

New single ‘On Naming’ gives a sign of what to expect. Shuffling to life with a careful reserve, the song unfurls with something almost akin to reticence, though the humble sound belies the depth of its dimensions. ‘On Naming’ is “a track about the power of language to create and destroy the world equally,” McVey explains. “Love, landscape, spirit—all the thousands of things we can feel without speaking, but nonetheless are compelled to write novels & poems & prayers & songs about.” The quietness is therefore a kind of respect, a seriousness, acknowledging the power yielded when writing songs and making art, and assuring its force is channelled in the proper direction.

You got to harden every heart
the beating, bleeding same
I love you differently these days
I try not to explain
put a hand over my face and you find the same
bones and lashes, lips to trace
the words that never came

Artwork by Adrienne Swan

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Out via The Long Road Society, latest album The Light is a testament to the fact. Described as a “33 minute long, drama-noir love story,” the record is rooted in old-time country styles but not limited to them, adding elements of dream pop and indie rock as well as a binding punk spirit. The result is perhaps best described as southern gothic—country music as it exists in the world of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers—where the wistful charms of the genre are backed up by something dark and fierce and strange.

Opener ‘Avondale’ serves as an introduction to this world. Equal parts heartfelt and irreverent, the song sees sweetness marble with the weird and the violent, characters on the edges of society now or then or maybe always. We meet the narrator at a Louisiana thrift store, where a chance encounter with a seeming stranger opens up a window into a history of train rides and jailhouses, the women who shared the cells. Revealed is a common history with bad situations, a sense of solidarity in the outsider life.

The poignant and impassioned ‘South Missouri’ takes us to a funeral service, a track of odd details and genuine heart, not mention an undercurrent of deadpan humour. “See you laid out in a suit you’d never wear,” Janko sings, “bet you’d have thought twice if you knew they’d comb out your hair.” ‘Demon’ offers a stark balance between dreaminess and darkness, while a version of Utah Phillips’s ‘The Telling Takes Me Home’ expands this interplay to a national level. The fantasy of the American West built on bones and haunted by ghosts.

The title track is both plaintive and celebratory, a song of hard won wisdom both railing against the ubiquitous nature of loss and finding some tenacious beauty in life’s transience. ‘Love Song’ follows suit, an ode to love in all of its forms, no matter how tender, how traditional, how true.

I’ve seen so many kinds of love
Falling out the windows or shutting out the sun
Running through the streets screaming tough
Or easy as a Sunday or sugar on your tongue
Giving up your money Having someone’s baby
Lying to a judge
Or lying to your love
Threatening you’ll die
Promising you’ll kill her
Making Christmas dinner
Or bringing home some flowers

With its near-whispered vocals and lingering melancholy, closer ‘Friend of Mine’ encapsulates The Light as a whole. The intimate sound weaving threads of fondness and regret, painting characters not surprised by loss or the passing of time but no less immune from the sting. Characters tough and lonely and ultimately human, voicing thoughts perhaps to an empty room, but no less sincere for the fact.

The Light is out now on The Long Road Society and available from the Dawn Riding Bandcamp page.

Album art by Sarah Rose Janko, photo by Gem Studio

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