Seraphina Lotkhamnga on May 8th, 2012

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To say that Amanda Jo Williams is the Joanna Newsom of the freak-folk scene would be giving the singer-songwriter a label that merely scratches the surface, and a lazy comparison at that. When last year’s “Mary’s Big Feet” introduced us to Williams’s occult world, we knew the avant-garde scatting in the midst of swampy arrangements would lead to more oddball combinations of alternative musings. “The Bear Eats Me,” her latest record (out June 19 on Neurotic Yell Records) featuring a full band this time around, is the fruition of her many intriguing idiosyncrasies: the sweet and sour, the playful coos and seduction, the minimal and cosmic country. Williams’ bare-bone songs such as the record’s title track is loaded arsenal once again filtered through her girlish Georgia twang, providing an imbalance that continues to captivate.

||| Download: “The Bear Eats Me”

||| Previously: “Homeheart”

||| Live: Amanda Jo Williams celebrates the release of “The Bear Eats Me” June 21 at the Echo with Brass Tax, Dead Dawn and Manhattan Murdery Mystery, and June 29 at Origami Vinyl.

||| Also: Watch her newly-edited video for “Sick and Dying” after the jump.

Photo by Daiana Feuer