(Independent Release) As a member of the local psychedelic surf-rock group Outersea, Lydia Brambila lets her guitar do the talking, providing a steady, rumbling counterweight to bandmate Kris Deason’s jittery riffs. On her new solo record, Brambila leads with her own voice, delivering eight sparse, dreamy “songs about trees, water, fauns and flight” that explore celestial realms while remaining tethered to folk tradition.
Brambila’s earthy fingerpicking on Migraineur suggests an affinity for a certain monastic breed of singer-songwriter from the 1960s and ’70s. Yet the album’s sense of melody and structure lends it a modern clarity, creating a hybrid approach that should appeal to fans of soft-psych explorers like Samara Lubelski.
Drenched in reverb, Brambila’s singing is the record’s sparkling centerpiece, while her lyrics resonate in unexpected ways given our current cultural reality. On the spectral mid-album gem “Cloister,” the songwriter navigates the concept of woman as mystic and martyr, as a chaotic universe’s moral guiding force.
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