CD Odyssey Disc 1000: Alela Diane

In 2009, when my wife Sheila encouraged me to start this crazy journey, I just wanted to keep my writer’s pilot light going on those days where the day job didn’t leave me enough energy to work on a book. Listening to music was going to happen anyway, so why not shake the rust off the fingers while I was at it?

Eight years later here I am with 1,000 reviews under my belt, and no plans to stop. Thanks to everyone who is still reading, and thanks to all the artists who continue to fuel my love of music.

Best of all, we’re hitting this milestone with a masterpiece.

Disc 1000 is…To Be Still

Artist: Alela Diane

Year of Release: 2009

What’s up with the Cover? Mostly just Alela Diane’s Giant Head. There are some other things going on (including another Alela Diane doing something partly out of frame that I can’t make out, but will assume is very folksy).

How I Came To Know It: It was ranked #1 in Jim Vorel’s “20 Great Folk Albums to add to your indie rock collection” and when I listened to a few of the tracks, I had to agree. It was impossible to find locally, so I couldn’t support my local record store and had to order online. I’ll make it up to you, record store!

That article also got me interested in Paste Magazine and I am currently working my way through their 100 best indie folk albums of all time. I’ve only got twenty albums to go, and I’ve identified 11 albums I must have so far. It is going to be an expensive journey, but if you’re going to spend your money on anything, spend it on music. It’s good for the soul.

How It Stacks Up:  This is the only Alela Diane album I have. I’ve heard her other stuff and liked it, but for now “To Be Still” lives alone on my shelf.

Ratings: 5 stars

“To Be Still” has a wild and fey quality to it that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into some elven forest. The music is haunting and timeless, like it was made by someone for whom the passage of time has little meaning.

Alela Diane is no woodland spirit; she’s an exceptional musician with wisdom beyond her years and an old soul who knows how to tap into universal truths and capture them with the clarity and power of a master painter.

“To Be Still” finds its inspiration in nature. This is an album where snowbanks, streams, and mountains mirror the landscapes of our minds. Diane explores deep within herself, and in so doing draws her audience into a similar introspection. Listening to her reminded me of those times in my youth where I would wander among the trees and lose myself, letting my mind wander and shed away my cares like an old skin.

Individual lyrical brilliance is everywhere on this record, but as a songwriter Diane is more of a landscape painter, and the individual images form a tapestry in your mind where you can’t help but let your mind wander in and out, half hypnotized by her picture perfect phrasing. This is an oil painting, where you need to take a step back, quieten your energy, and let it slowly come into focus.

Of course, it helps draw in your audience when you can sing like Alela Diane. Her upper range is unearthly, and she has that clearly enunciated folk style without ever slipping into a sing-song delivery. She lilts through songs that most people can’t sing at all, with a grace that lifts you up into the clouds. Some music is for singing along; “To Be Still” is about doing exactly as the title suggests; being still and letting it flow over you.

While Diane’s vocals are the star of the show, the musicians on this record are amazing, the more so because they willingly play a laid back style, adding brush strokes here and there to support the lead singer. Kudos in particular to the string section. Rondi Soule on violin and Luke Janela on cello. The violin on “White as Diamonds” is particularly powerful, crisp and expansive like the winter’s snow it helps evoke.

Singling out verses on an album this good is hard, but these lines from “Take Us Back” hit me in the core:

“I’ve a friend who lives out by the river’s mouth

He knows the fiddle’s cry is an old sound

A lonesome bow, the creaks and moans of empty houses

Are songs like falling rain”

Just typing those words puts shivers up my spine. When coupled with some fine playing and Alela Diane’s gifted vocals they cast a spell that puts you right at the river’s mouth, hearing a fiddle sing to you across the untold ages that instrument has inspired us.

Alela Diane writes all the songs, which are innovative and yet have an old school traditionalism in their foundations. You get a strong sense she understands what has come before, and knows how to build from there without ever being derivative. Rarely do you hear songs this ambitious that don’t overreach or come across too clever, yet Alela Diane manages it with apparent ease.

My friend Josh and I listened to this album together for the first time and argued about what kind of music it was. Josh determined it was pop based on the chord progression (he is more musically educated and a stickler for tradition). I said folk based on the style and arrangement of the songs. It doesn’t really matter, of course. Great music transcends genre, and “To Be Still” is a modern masterpiece.

Best tracks: All tracks – because that’s how five star albums work, my friends.