Alela Diane

Alela Diane grew up in the winding rivers and golden hillsides of Nevada City, California, listening to her parents harmonize bluegrass songs in the kitchen, and began writing her own folky songs when she moved to San Francisco at age 19. She has built one of contemporary folk’s most quietly extraordinary catalogs since her beloved breakthrough The Pirate’s Gospel. She released two impeccably different albums via Rough Trade: 2009's "aesthetically focused, meticulously arranged" (Pitchfork) To Be Still and 2011's more collaborative full-band effort Alela Diane & Wild Divine. At the release of the latter, Consequence praised, "Alela Diane‘s uncanny ability to place herself, and her music, completely out of musical and historical context has won her a sizable fan base in the New Weird America folk movement...Hers is a timeless sound, that of a wayfaring troubadour, which only seems to come a few times a generation." She stripped her music back to the stark guitar-and-voice arrangements of her earlier work for 2013's intimate and divorce-shadowed About Farewell, while Cold Moon (2015, with Ryan Francesconi) explored spacious, atmospheric textures. UNCUT called 2018's widely-acclaimed Cusp "insanely beautiful, with the strength and delicacy of spider silk," with The Guardian explaining, "The album title comes from Menig’s near-death during childbirth, and her subsequent realisation that we are forever 'on the cusp' between death and life, heartbreak and euphoria, all of which are in fulsome supply here." Alela Diane's most recent studio release of all new original material, 2022's Looking Glass, serves as a reflective pandemic-era album shaped by themes of isolation, climate anxiety, and resilience that Under the Radar said "perfectly fit" that moment in time. More news and music to come from Alela Diane in the new year.