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Alela Diane - To Be Still
| Nowtoronto |
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Alela Diane To Be Still (Rough Trade) By Tim Perlich For a second there, I thought it might be difficult for Alela Diane to top her standout performance on the Headless Heroes’ recent covers concept album, The Silence Of Love. But the singer/songwriter proves to be at her best when singing her own earthy tunes inspired by the trees and tumult of life in Nevada City. Her impressive 2006 debut, The Pirate’s Gospel, and 2007’s stripped-down Songs Whistled Through White Teeth 10-inch EP were just the warm-up for the bewitching display of To Be Still, which benefits from fuller instrumental backing without sacrificing any of the melancholic mystery that made her early work so captivating. With this single self-produced masterstroke, Alela Diane has effectively shaken off all the ill-fitting labels of “new weird America” and “freak folk” and given notice that a warmly expressive and unique voice has arrived with stories to tell. Top track: The Ocean...full text |
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| Pastemagazin |
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Home again, eventually. There's a powerful weariness to 25-year-old Alela Diane's voice as it dips and curls its way through her second album, woozy pedal steel glinting and shimmering all about her, hollow-hooved percussion trailing in her wake. Like The Pirate's Gospel, her cruelly unheralded 2006 debut, To Be Still is a staggering meditation on the idea of home in its many forms, and shares its predecessor's knowing heart—young, but already familiar with the tugging weights of time, family and love. "Dry Grass & Shadows" and "Take Us Back" vie for reunion with hills and brambles left long ago but dreamt still; "Age Old Blue," a devastating duet with outsider troubadour Michael Hurley, etches the roots of generations of women on sea-swept cliffs in fine enough lyrical detail to stir nostalgia in even the most landlocked soul. The album's title itself is a wish that hopefully won't come true; no stillness could be more beautiful than this folky fugue....full text |
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| Musicomh |
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Alela Diane's debut album took four years to flutter into the consciousness of a public beyond the cafés of hinterland California with its sparsely arranged, post-Vashti Bunyan-esque songs of quietly bucolic travails. The follow-up comes with a much "bigger" production ("bigger" being a relative term). It's all the better for it. Her first two albums came in home-made sleeves embroidered personally and strictly by hand by the then 20-year-old artist. They enjoyed minimal distribution, being sold exclusively at Alela Diane Menig's coffee house performances in Nevada City, a once-important gold rush centre in the hills behind Sacramento which today houses just about 3,000 souls. New-Folk superstar Joanna Newsom lived here too, and encouraged the young singer-songwriter to perform her songs live. Even so, it took more than four years until the second of her self-produced albums, The Pirate's Gospel, via a succession of ever more professional indie labels and impressive performances in ever more prestigious venues, managed to attract the ears of a wider internationale of "wyrd folk" as well as singer/songwriter audience....full text |
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