$9.00 – $29.00
Other ways to purchase this release: iTunes | Amazon | Bandcamp
In this dark summer season of disharmony and violence, we can all use a few moments of serenity amid the storm. In recent months, Open to Chance, the beautiful new album by Itasca, has offered us respite and balm in the form of its quiet, cloudy idylls, and we hope it might do the same for you.
The music of L.A.-based guitarist, singer, and songwriter Kayla Cohen is mutable and multivalent, richly allusive of the hermetic worlds of private-press canyon-cult mystics and East Coast noiseniks alike. Her adept fingerstyle guitar work—nimble but unshowy, always at the service of framing her plaintively unspooling modal progressions and gorgeous, moonlit voice—centers these melancholy pastorales in a hazy, heat-mirage space equally suggestive of familiarity and distance, community and anomie. Itasca’s enchanting, acid folk-inflected PoB debut is also the first to feature a full band.
Pre-orders include an immediate 320k MP3 download of “Buddy,” which the good people at NPR Music’s Songs We Love have premiered here, saying:
“Cohen brings an airy but mysterious late-’60s/early-’70s psych-folk feel to the fore, and this fanciful account of alfresco domesticity certainly feels like a slice of vintage Laurel Canyon balladry. The mellow glow [her music] generates is reason enough to want to bask in its evanescent light for as long as life’s harsher aspects can conceivably be held at bay.”
– Jim Allen, NPR Music
Pitchfork posted some kind words about the song as well:
“The steady acoustic canter, the sighing slide guitar, the serenely idyllic images: It all suggests the balm of a gentle breeze beneath the bright sunlight, a feeling you’d want to capture indefinitely. Cohen does exactly that, suspending an instant in eternal amber.”
– Grayson Haver Currin, Pitchfork
The gently rolling song punctures a dream of romantic Arcadian domesticity with the darker religious ramifications of holy debt: “I thought it would be nice/To live on the mountain by your side/Love you in the sun-warmed lake/Forget my dues to the saints.”
The LP, pressed on 140g virgin vinyl, features a heavy-duty 24pt matte jacket and download code. The CD edition is housed in a gatefold jacket. We anticipate shipping pre-orders about a week in advance of the Sept. 30 release date. All pre-order customers will be entered in a drawing for an Open to Chance test pressing or PoB t-shirt.
More details here, and below.
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- Photo by Ella Andersson.
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- Photo by Ella Andersson.
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- Photo by Ella Andersson.
ACCLAIM FOR ITASCA
“This feeling that we, as listeners, have been granted access into Itasca’s private inner sanctum is what helps give [Cohen’s music] its quiet gravity, and her ample instrumental skills and deft songcraft make this invitation well worth your while.” – Pitchfork
“Gorgeous acid-folk reverie … This is a heady slice of lysergic ladies of the canyon, with the feel of tropical microdots that dominated the Linda Perhacs sides given a slightly more baroque dream-time feel. This one came out of nowhere and knocked us sideways.” – David Keenan
“The image of the solitary songwriter strumming away and singing her songs promises transparency, but a chief virtue of Itasca is that it doesn’t give up its secrets too easily.” – The Wire
“Itasca shows a kind of total fluidity of delivery, where she sings anything she sings, and the music slips and flows around her.” – LA Record
RIYL: Michael Chapman, Bridget St John, Mike Cooper, Steve Gunn, Kenny Knight, Ryley Walker, Meg Baird, Jessica Pratt, Linda Perhacs, Sibylle Baier, Bert Jansch, Vashti Bunyan, Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Current 93
Photo by Ella Andersson.
ITASCA TOUR DATES
July 21 – San Francisco, CA – The Lab *
July 22 – Eugene, OR – The Boreal *
July 23 – Seattle, WA – House show *
July 24 – Portland, OR – Turn Turn Turn *
July 26 – Gualala, CA – OZ Farm *
July 28 – Sacramento, CA – Gold Lion Arts *
July 29 – Los Angeles, CA – House show *
August 5th – Los Angeles, CA – The Lost Knight w/ Gun Outfit
* – w/ Sarah Louise
With Ryley Walker:
7. November – Amsterdam, NL / Paradiso Noord
8. November – Groningen, NL / VERA
10. November – Brussels, BE / AB Club /
11. November – Bruges, BE / Cactus Club
13. November – Brighton, UK / The Haunt
14. November – Manchester, UK / Ruby Lounge
15. November – Glasgow, UK / Broadcast
16. November – Birmingham, UK / Hare & Hounds
17. November – London, UK / Islington Assembly Hall
29. November – Lausanne, CH / Le Bourg
30. November – Schorndorf, DE / Manufaktur
1. December – Erlangen, DE / E-Werk
2. December – Berlin, DE / Kantine am Berghain
4. December – Oslo, NO / John Dee
5. December – Stockholm, SE / Bryggarsalen
6. December – Copenhagen, DK / Pumpehuset
7. December – Hamburg, DE / Nochtspeicher