Stream: Miranda Lee Richards, ‘Lucid I Would Dream’

Kevin Bronson on March 31st, 2017

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Barely a year after her strong return from a seven-year layoff, Miranda Lee Richards has announced she will release her fourth album, “Existential Beast,” on June 16. Should there be a trigger alert for any album with the word “existential” in the title? Probably. But Richards has a way of making such contemplations a rich, lustrous experience. Like her 2016 psychedelic folk gem “Echoes of the Dreamtime,” the new album was produced by Richards’ husband Rick Parker (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, among others). As aural experiences go, it’s wraparound sound, warm and precise, ethereal when the songwriter’s text calls for it. (It’s not available yet, but the track “Golden Gate” almost single-handedly tries to start a new Summer of Love.)

Richards says the new work is a political album that takes a personal tack. “In essence, we are all still working within those animal urges of fear, competition, survival and sexuality which are [deep-seated] and manifesting in varying ways and degrees for different individuals, depending on where they are at,” she says. “But like it or not, these tendencies have been revealed, within our leaders, our countries and ourselves; it is indeed a pivotal and transformational time and there is much work to be done.” As for the first single “Lucid I Would Dream,” she says it’s “a conversation with the subconscious and a study in dream interpretation. I have recurring dreams about being able to breathe underwater, and this apparently, is about being able to master complex emotional realms.”

||| Stream: “Lucid I Would Dream”