Stream: Itasca, ‘Bess’s Dance’

Kevin Bronson on August 21st, 2019

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The finely woven folk music of Kayla Cohen — doing business under the name Itasca — transports you to a serene place, and, more importantly, invites you into the conversation.

In fact, her forthcoming album “Spring” sprang from a serene place. To write the album — the follow-up to 2016’s widely praised “Open to Chance” — Cohen escaped L.A. to take up residence in an old adobe house in rural New Mexico. There, she drew inspiration from vast Southwestern expanses and her hikes in the rugged mountains. The album serves as a document of the connection she forged with the land, as well as perhaps a plea to form one’s own bond. The title “Spring” could be read as referring to the season, but it is more a reflection of the scarcity of water sources. Or, as Cohen says, “the search for true connection to the earth, the seductive nature of answers… the dusty spring deep in the mind that keeps us sifting.”

Even before “Spring,” Itasca’s songs, with their subtle orchestration and fingerstyle guitars, had the glow of a desert sunrise. The painterly “Bess’s Song” is an introduction to the album, a languid meditation with vivid imagery that ends with Itasca arriving at the conclusion: “We create great stages where we / act out the borders of desire.”

“Spring” is out Nov. 1 via Paradise of Bachelors.

||| Stream: “Bess’s Song”