Sorceress

Description

Now based in California, Texan Jess Williamson releases her fourth album, Sorceress, on the Mexican Summer label. Through eleven folk incantations with country and pop accents, Jess Williamson fuses magic with the everyday. In response to this confusing time, we are experiencing an occult renaissance. Offering a kaleidoscope of hues from old 70s films, 90s country, and West Coast psychedelia, Sorceress weaves the wild love letters of a woman towards a confusing present and an uncertain future. Jess delivers reflections on femininity and the pursuit of perfection, New Age beliefs and practices, critiques of capitalism and social media, landscapes of the South and West, and intimate details of the lives and deaths of loved ones and friends. Addressing the loss of innocence and the wisdom gained, Sorceress is an album that is both self-critical, assured, and introspective. On the lush and gently infectious "Wind On Tin," the narrator travels to an isolated village in a desert to attend a friend's funeral. She thinks she hears the voice of God; she is either touched by grace or mad, or both. "Infinite Scroll" is as much a song about broken love and fading memories as it is a commentary on online life. On "Gulf of Mexico," the protagonist realizes she would prefer to leave a drunken debauchery for a cozy night at home. Sorceress was written in Los Angeles, recorded at Gary's Electric in Brooklyn, and finished at Dandy Sounds, a home studio on a ranch in Dripping Springs, Texas, where she recorded Cosmic Wink, her 2018 album. While remaining true to her country roots, her music has grown in ambition. The change occurred gradually, without skipping steps, in a simple and natural way. The singer-songwriter creates deeply moving songs that revolve around her powerful voice, a voice that is both strong and vulnerable, gently passionate and intimate.