Alaska Reid – Disenchanter (2023) [FLAC 24bit/44,1kHz]

Alaska Reid – Disenchanter (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 32:38 minutes | 359 MB | Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Luminelle Recordings

Alaska Reid hails from a frontier city in Southwestern Montana whose population lingers around 8,000 residents, and while Reid now works in Los Angeles, she can’t give up her hometown. Her career began here, where she sang in basements, churches, and gyms before starting her first band, Alyeska. Soon talent, and her parents’ minivan, drove her to tour further west. Now, Reid splits her time between the coastlines and the mountainous West, splitting what time she can between the two and working in both cities.

Disenchanter, is as much a collection of stories as it is a collection of songs. Though Reid’s principle instrument is guitar, she worked on Disenchanter with A. G. Cook, whose synths and the duo’s combined array of pedals allowed Reid to explore her pop inclinations after she recorded each track live at home in both Montana and California. “I have my road dog arsenal from playing tons of live shows, so most of the songs have at least one guitar with my personal chain in homage to my live set up,” she says. “We’d then layer combinations of A. G.’s pedals onto the track, and the contrast between them mirrors our respective musical approaches.”Alaska Reid is a watcher—observing people, collecting their stories and dreaming up new ones for them in her kind of folky, kind of electro, kind of Maggie Rogers-esque songs. She compares her habits to a Dungeons and Dragons character, the Fiend Folio, who disenchants magical objects by absorbing their power. Hence the title of her debut album. “I fantasize about other people’s lives, other people’s professions, and writing is a way I can approximate what it must be like to be someone else,” she has said, but also admits: “In doing so [a writer] drains some of that magic and metabolizes it into something that belongs to them.” “Back to This” was written after seeing forest service workers on a break in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness preserve in Montana, where Reid grew up under the limitless Big Sky. “In the moss around the creek/ I saw some smoke jumpers all in their twenties/ Dust in their hair, sun on their skin/ Kiss away the boredom ’til the fires begin,” she sings in a near-whisper. The song has a dusky “Bette Davis Eyes” vibe—its artificial synth sound managing to conjure up something atmospheric. Set to a stop-start bucking rhythm, “Palomino” borrows the memories of Reid’s mother, re-creating stories she told about working at the titular legendary Los Angeles country and western bar in the ’80s. “Laugh at the guys bumping into us girls/ Had freedom ’cause I had my car/ And I wasn’t trying to fall in love/ Just figure out the world.” “Dogs & Girls” plays out to a carousel melody and highlights Reid’s sibilant S’s as she reveals, “Overheard at NA/ She’s got a pain that God can’t take away” before the whole thing builds to a swirling chaos. Produced by her boyfriend, hyperpop maestro A.G. Cook (known for his work with Sophie, Charli XCX and Hannah Diamond), Disenchanter is at times kinetic (“Always”), featherweight (“Seeds”) and nodding to Joni Mitchell’s early canyon-folk sounds (“Leftover”). Reid even finds a host of characters—”like nesting dolls,” she’s said—inside herself. Boppy “She Wonders” is about the upside-down, suspended-in-time world of touring and how artists “reveal different elements of themselves to fans, the touring group, the rest of the band … I wanted the song to reflect how psychologically exhausting it is.” She sings of a Holiday inn in “nowhere Southwest again” and “Sitting on the corner of the bed/ Pretending to drink” before the song switches to a spoken-word part she’s compared to an inner monologue: “What do they think of me/ Is it embarrassing?” – Shelly Ridenour

Tracklist:

1-01. Alaska Reid – French Fries (02:57)
1-02. Alaska Reid – Dogs & Girls (02:50)
1-03. Alaska Reid – She Wonders (03:25)
1-04. Alaska Reid – Leftover (03:33)
1-05. Alaska Reid – Palomino (04:01)
1-06. Alaska Reid – Back To This (03:10)
1-07. Alaska Reid – Arctic Heart (03:09)
1-08. Alaska Reid – Always (02:13)
1-09. Alaska Reid – Seeds (03:25)
1-10. Alaska Reid – Airship (03:51)

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