Looking Glass

Album review

Alela Diane’s eighth album begins like all her others—up in the heavens. Since her debut almost twenty years ago, the singer from the West Coast has become the world’s leading specialist in light, airy folk, with music as elemental and fascinating as wispy cirrus clouds. Looking Glass initially follows the lead of Cusp: a few finely profiled folk songs which soar off into a clear horizon. A cruising altitude is quickly reached before Diane introduces some turbulence to her beautiful routine: she transforms into a psychedelic fairy on ‘Strawberry Moon’, before the following track ‘Of Love’, where you can almost hear a unified chorus of crickets singing away. Then there’s ‘Camellia’, where she sounds like an enchanted Lana Del Rey. Diane has returned to earth, utilising new arrangement ideas (flutes, harps and strings) from an old book of psychedelic folk recipes. Surrounded by faithful musicians Heather Woods Broderick and Ryan Francesconi (arrangement), as well as Tucker Martine (production), Diane plays comfortably in familiar territory. Alongside both the piano and the guitar, her vocals are remarkably consistent: her melancholy is never pathetic, and her austerity is never too severe. However, in Looking Glass, she manages to imbue her songs with new light. Arguably closer to demos, you could argue that these new Alela Diane songs don’t soar quite as high as their predecessors, but they are significantly more revealing and, upon close examination, phenomenally beautiful. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz