The Oakland-raised, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ivy Knight has, over the past few months, developed a dreamy, introspective style across various singles, moving between acoustic arrangements and darker sonic undertones. On her debut album Iron Mountain, too, she offers alternative, innovative interpretations of traditional folk.
In old trail ballads from the late 1950s and early 1960s, she repeatedly conjures images of barren landscapes: »I turned the rock over in my hands, it looks different now.« »Swimming in Blood« is an atmospheric ballad that lingers, even if its lyrics, concerned with memories of her own past and times gone by, remain hard to grasp in their apparent lightness.
With Deer Park as producer, another contemporary layer is added – reduced, open and cautiously uncanny. Musically, however, Knight still moves within classic singer-songwriter forms. Dreamy acoustic arrangements, joined here and there by roughened fragments, strongly recall Joanne Robertson or Mark William Lewis. Iron Mountain carries a quiet tension within it: dreamy and introspective, but not detached.
Iron Mountain
