Forever, I’ve Been Being Born

I like to think I’ve shaped my FOMO into a generally healthy force for good over the years, at least as regards my commitment to the arts, but it really let me down on this occasion, when it took me more than two months to accidentally discover this new album from an old favorite. Still, I’ll cut myself some slack on this one, as it was easy to lose track of Jesse Sykes in the fourteen years between her last album and this one. Well, that track is lost no more (and two tour EPs I missed in 2008 and 2009 have also popped up on Bandcamp in the intervening years!), and thankfully I caught up before there were truly catastrophic consequences: she and the band still haven’t played the east coast since 2011, when I got to see them put on a phenomenal show with the Sadies at the Bowery Ballroom. There were some west coast dates this month and a short European tour is lined up for April, so I have reason to be hopeful they’ll finally make it out to my neck of the woods again before too long. (And let me just say I wish more bands kept comprehensive public archives of their tour history like this one does.)

The new record is great; the dreamy magic of Sykes’s long-running collaboration with guitarist Phil Wandscher picks up right where it left off. Its gentle fusion of melancholy country and psychedelic folk will be a welcome, palliative soundtrack for this unforgiving winter.