Disenchanter

Language available : english

Alaska Reid is a watcher—observing people, collecting their stories and dreaming up new ones for them in her kind of folky, kind of electro, kind of Maggie Rogers-esque songs. She compares her habits to a Dungeons and Dragons character, the Fiend Folio, who disenchants magical objects by absorbing their power. Hence the title of her debut album. "I fantasize about other people's lives, other people's professions, and writing is a way I can approximate what it must be like to be someone else," she has said, but also admits: "In doing so [a writer] drains some of that magic and metabolizes it into something that belongs to them." "Back to This" was written after seeing forest service workers on a break in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness preserve in Montana, where Reid grew up under the limitless Big Sky. "In the moss around the creek/ I saw some smoke jumpers all in their twenties/ Dust in their hair, sun on their skin/ Kiss away the boredom 'til the fires begin," she sings in a near-whisper. The song has a dusky "Bette Davis Eyes" vibe—its artificial synth sound managing to conjure up something atmospheric. Set to a stop-start bucking rhythm, "Palomino" borrows the memories of Reid's mother, re-creating stories she told about working at the titular legendary Los Angeles country and western bar in the '80s. "Laugh at the guys bumping into us girls/ Had freedom 'cause I had my car/ And I wasn't trying to fall in love/ Just figure out the world." "Dogs & Girls" plays out to a carousel melody and highlights Reid's sibilant S's as she reveals, "Overheard at NA/ She's got a pain that God can't take away" before the whole thing builds to a swirling chaos. Produced by her boyfriend, hyperpop maestro A.G. Cook (known for his work with Sophie, Charli XCX and Hannah Diamond), Disenchanter is at times kinetic ("Always"), featherweight ("Seeds") and nodding to Joni Mitchell's early canyon-folk sounds ("Leftover"). Reid even finds a host of characters—"like nesting dolls," she's said—inside herself. Boppy "She Wonders" is about the upside-down, suspended-in-time world of touring and how artists "reveal different elements of themselves to fans, the touring group, the rest of the band … I wanted the song to reflect how psychologically exhausting it is." She sings of a Holiday inn in "nowhere Southwest again" and "Sitting on the corner of the bed/ Pretending to drink" before the song switches to a spoken-word part she's compared to an inner monologue: "What do they think of me/ Is it embarrassing?" © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz