Lia Ices
Grown Unknown
Jagjaguwar
Do you want less Tori Amos and Amanda Palmer tell-all transparency in the world and long for more of the otherworldly opacity and majesty of Kate Bush and Laura Nyro? Then buddy, you’d better run yerself to the record store and pick up Lia Ices’ debut. This is an album that makes you realize it’s so easy to do music right instead of all overwrought. Ices’ sound is fully developed and largely her own from the get-go. Her voice is strong, sonorous and theatrical. Siouxsie’s drama mixed with the unvarnished beauty of Lisa Gerrard. Hitting unpredictable highs. Backing her own vocals. Sometimes disappearing contented under the right piano note. The instrumentation is spare and baroque, elegiac and torchy, ringing piano chords and percussion and organ, not unlike a sunny foggy shivery morning. Justin Vernon, of everyone’s favorite Bon Iver makes a cameo, but it’s barely noticeable, you’re drinking so deeply of Ices’ singular soundvision. Potential city.
Jagjaguwar: http://www.jagjaguwar.com
