There are images that inevitably affect individual and collective imagination. The picture of the Syrian child lying on a beach of the Turkish coast is certainly one of them. The sight of the unfortunate child could not but generate to our Western eyes dismay, indignation and a latent sense of guilt. Of course, it is a matter of a moment, then even that indignation is buried by the constant flow of information that overwhelms us every day and thus we forget it.
But not everyone forgets … perhaps the most sensitive of us are actually hurt in the soul by certain images and to heal the wound they can do nothing but try to cure it with the medicine of art. For example, Californian singer-songwriter Alela Diane takes her cue from that dramatic image of the dead child to write “Emigré“, a song that’s part of her new album “Cusp” that represents its artistic and emotional peak.
The capacity of conveying feelings of such power into music, in a poignant and sincere way, is a decidedly arduous challenge. When we face operations of this kind, the doubt of dealing with façade operations and with ostentation of pain that point more to move than to involve the listener, often arises.
In this case, however, doubts are swept away by listening. The piece tells in a touching way the tragedy of migrants, mothers and children, their dreams and their lives torn from the sea.
The delicate text reflects the sensitivity of the artist who, having just become a mother, succeeds in making an authentic emotional participation in the drama of broken maternity, which finds its culmination in the metaphor of the refrain that brings together the spirit and dream of migrants with migratory birds free to move across borders.
From a musical point of view the piece has a strong sense of measure and an expressiveness that never yields to the temptation of easy shortcuts. In the final crescendo, when Diane repeatedly repeats the refrain like a litany, a superb and never melodious choral and string arrangement helps to create a palpable emotional tension.
Diane then demonstrates with “Emigrè“, to those who still were not convinced, to be much more than one of the many girls with the guitar who emerged in the 2000s, but to be an artist with a strong personality and artistic caliber.
Since the beginning of her career the Californian artist has always risked of being confined in the stereotype of the folk singer-songwriter.
In fact, it was not easy to emerge in a context of widespread uniformity where it often ends up standing out who is able to combine talent with an original proposal or a particular vocality. In this sense the first name that comes to mind is that of Joanna Newsom, who perhaps more than any other has left a sign in the female songwriting of this millennium.
However, Diane was able to highlight herself and carve out her role by following a more classic path even without “special effects”.
“The Pirate’s Gospel”, her true debut, recorded in 2004 but printed on a large scale only in 2006, was a revelation in this sense.
A singer-songwriter linked to the traditional sound armed only with guitar, banjo and her own voice, often superimposed, which showed an extraordinary ability to write and an interpretative force, even in an overpopulated scene like that of feminine folk.
It certainly helped the superficial association with one of the phenomena of the moment, the so-called folk freak, brought to the fore by Devendra Banhart and precisely by her friend Newsom with whom the first Diane shared some vocal charms.
From that record, that since then has not lost its power, Diane has come a long way, between more (“To Be Still” and “About Farewell”) and less successful (“AD & The Wild Divine”) works, shipwrecked weddings and new loves and finally motherhood.
This new condition of mother emerges as a fundamental step in growth not only from the personal point of view but also from the artistic point of view in the new album. Diane does not hide it, embellishing booklet with photos of girls and herself and dedicating her entire work to her daughters.
The girl portrayed on the cover of the first record that conquered listeners with a rustic and essential sound therefore leaves room to a woman with the proud gaze of “Cusp” that fascinates with her maturity that lead her to a more complete and rich sound.
In this sense, the experience of “Cold Moon” appears to be essential; the album released in 2015 with Ryan Francesconi maybe is not entirely convincing from writing point of view, but it certainly redeemed itself with its remarkable elegance in its arrangements. The same elegance that we can also find in this new album where, for example, the strings curated by Francesconi himself are masterfully integrated to get a balanced sound that never overpowers the rest of the instrumentation.
An element of discontinuity with respect to the previous works is represented by presence of piano which, used for the first time by Diane in the composition of several pieces, contributes to giving a more authorial and less typically folk style to the tracks.
From wtirng point of viewwe find an author much more aware of her own strengths. The result is a series of songs that, if at first listen may seem innocuous or not very incisive, after more listenings acquire depth and demonstrate an uncommon personality, even in the context of a conventional writing.
Also from the vocal point of view Diane leaves aside the most naive aspects of the beginning showing a greater mastery in the management of her own interpretative abilities.
So she does not get out with broken bones when she moves on the thorny ground of “Albatross” in the footsteps of Joni Mitchell and she demonstrate her skills when she seems to go near to Laura Marling style in the delightful “Threshold”, decorated with a delicate flute arrangement.
Even more surprisingly, Diane is not afraid to dive in melodic terrain on “Ether & Wood” and to convincingly inject a 70’s soft Californian sound fluid into songs like “Moves Us Blind” and the “Never Easy” refrain.
So this a record that, despite a superficial and fake impression of ordinariness, invites us not to stop at easy appearances but to go in depth so as to be able to reveal its riches. (Rating: 7.5)
By Mason
Originally published in italian on May 13 2018
Republished in english on May 12 2019
