Mariee Sioux's third album Grief in Exile came out last Friday. It's the first I've heard of her, but it took only a few seconds of the opening track Black Snakes playing for it to have me in its grip. Sioux's Native American heritage is enough for the listener to make immediate associations. With Buffy Saint Marie or Black Belt Eagle Scout. But Alela Diane, Karen Dalton, Vashti Bunyan or Sybelle Baier are also summoned forth as the record plays on.
Sioux has a haunting spectral voice, and it floats above her band's folkish accompaniment. what's immediately obvious is that Grief in Exile is a beautiful, decorative record. She casts her spell and it's maintained over the course of the record. What the lyrical concerns are is not immediately obvious but the immediate sense that's invoked is one of redemption and healing and of ancestral memory.
There's a fetching simplicity and minimalism here that's much akin to the best records of Diane, Dalton and Bunyan a good record to turn to when you want to drain yourself of the cares of your world. A superlative record and a great way to start June.
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