In times like these, Alela Diane’s haunting and reflective new songs seem to ask, where can we find shelter?
That question—of shelter, of refuge—links Looking Glass to Diane’s entire body of work, which often touches on the various meanings of home, past and present.
A self-described home-body whose tastes run toward the antique and the homemade, Diane is likely to be found drinking tea in a rocking chair on her wraparound porch (when not corralling her two young daughters). And she traces the genesis of her creative life to the traumatic loss of her first place of refuge: her magical childhood home, nestled among the mountains and rivers of Nevada City, California. When she was 19, her parents divorced and sold the house, where she recalls often listening to her parents harmonize bluegrass songs in the kitchen. Her first album, The Pirate’s Gospel, was inspired by that loss.
More than one song on Looking Glass draws meaning from reflecting on earlier versions of herself, as in these lines from “When We Believed” about her days as a young touring musician: “And I think of who I was then/Who I am now/Who am I now, that I was then?”
The result is an album that represents a new artistic achievement for Diane. Looking Glass is the first of her records to be produced by the celebrated Tucker Martine (Neko Case, My Morning Jacket, The Decembrists). The album was arranged by her longtime friend and fellow musician Heather Woods Broderick. Notable guest musicians include Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket), Scott Avett (The Avett Brothers), Eli Moore (Lake), Mikaela Davis, Luke Ydsitie (Blind Pilot), and Ryan Fracesconi (Joanna Newsom).
“She has the sort of voice that both affirms one’s world-weariness and soothes it,” wrote Jim Vorel in Paste Magazine. “It feels like the aural equivalent of someone laying a hand on your shoulder and saying, ‘I’m here for you, if you need to talk.’”
Laura Gibson is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter and producer born and raised in the small Oregon logging town of Coquille. Her most recent album Goners (Barsuk/City Slang) was praised by NPR as “a gripping collection of songs about accountability and grief.” The Fader called it “so incessantly beautiful that one cannot help but want to gently crack it open to get to its beating core.” The New York Times described her work as “longing and instinct, and whether they can ever converge.”
Both literary and raw, with a love of traditional folk music and a bent toward experimentation, Gibson has performed on four continents and had the distinct honor of playing the very first (and 200th) NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Between albums, she earned an MFA in fiction writing from Hunter College, completing her thesis in the back of a tour van. She’s an enthusiastic collaborator, writing music for theatre and film and lending her voice to many beloved bands. Her essays have appeared in Talkhouse, the Los Angeles Review, and Oregon Humanities Magazine, and she was a 2020 recipient of the McElheny Award from MIT for her work on the Timber Wars podcast. She is currently working on both a nonfiction book and a new album.
