Alela Diane "To Be Still" 4 / 5 Subba Cultcha Album Review

Subba Cultcha give Alela Diane's "To Be Still" 4 out of 5;

"Into the groove. Alela Diane’s still waters run valley deep.

As I’ve said before, Californian songstress, Alela Diane, makes anachronistic, chilly, melancholic acoustic folk, singing for today with the voice of a bygone generation. Tapping into the same sultry, sexy, oppressively humid, tone that Eva Cassidy evoked, Alela plays tumbledown porch music like a broken, abused, fallen angel, whistling an ironic mirthless ditty to her finger-plucked dirge.

To Be Still further explores Alela’s ability to bring butterflies to bellies, and with this new release you can almost track her transformation from homegrown local singer/songwriter to touring recording artist. Right from the get-go, first track, Dry Grass & Shadows, laden with it’s country steels and indelible sense of wide open plains, finds us pulling out of some backwater truck-stop at 2am, leaving Barstow on Interstate 15, head resting against the glass, Alela’s songs of desolation and still waters ringing in our ears.

In the wake of anti-folk and all those who have assimilated the guise of folk musician, Alela Diane’s record seems genuine, bare, honest. It’s not tinted with the cynical, affected pseudo-psychedelia of recent folk outpourings, feeling more like a long ramble through cornfields and across babbling brooks with a mysterious, beautiful, simple stranger, rather than an evening snorting nutmeg off a rusty cooker with some charlatan in a tie-dyed kaftan. Do you see what I mean?

She’s a musically literate Scout Niblett, a fledgling Nina Nastasia, a lone rival to Anni Rossi for release of the month. She’s really rather good."

Click here to read see the full review