Presented by:
Triple D's
Cornelia Murr
Cornelia Murr
Run to the Center as an album perfects Cornelia Murr’s already established signature style; songs with structures of unpredictable elegance that fracture conventional rules. She climbs us higher in a supreme moment, she leads us into a sudden harbor where a fresh rhythmic change awaits, she gives us an intro of bullfrog, a touch of strings, a kiss of horns, sustaining arches of synth, dabs of found object percussion and playful keyboards moving like a caterpillar staircase. All parts becoming the bedrock that jointly float her panoply of poetry forward. This is a full bloom on the summit.Ripe with curiosity and dilemma, the album is an open gate of philosophical ruminations. Ideas of how “life will thrive wherever it can”, questions of how we all make it through amidst the unnatural systems we live inside of, and the complexities of a shelf- life love. Murr’s lyrics range from cryptic to colloquial with splashes of proverb. She turns her daily life into metaphors. Some elements feel city, some pastoral. One stellar line of “Oh the joy in what’s yet to become” will show up once and never repeat. Her artful weaving of the abstract and universal leaves us raptured.From her poetic mountain, covered in delicacies of tone, she delivers us an album of surprises. With a whistling solo and vocals of demi-god allure, she frosts the cake. Her “wanting everything at the same time” has formed a real life masterpiece that will bless any little heart that listens.-Ry Welch+++Cornelia Murr was born in London and resides in New York as a dual citizen. Working with producer Jim James of My Morning Jacket on her 2018 debut album Lake Tear of the Clouds, Murr conjured a hazy blend of folk and cosmic soul music, bringing to mind the fantasias of Broadcast, Stereolab’s most pastoral moments, and the spooky romance of Beach House. She released the single “Hang Yr Hat” in 2021, inspired in part by the art of mime and the legendary Marcel Marceau, followed by the self-produced EP Corridor in November 2022, which No Depression describes “is as much an exploration of sparkling pop as it is a deeply felt mediation on the ache of being alive.” She has toured and collaborated with contemporaries such as Rodrigo Amarante, Lucius, Michael Nau, and Alice Boman. Her second LP, Run to the Center is out February 28th, 2025.
Reverend Baron
From the academy of deep soul and no ego, Reverend Baron delivers visions of liquor store East LA, the off-the-freeway dry mirage of slow motion graffiti and lonely seagulls. A nylon stringed zen fog with themes of woozy love, layered dimensions of nostalgia and glazed neighborhood tales that roll in with a natural ease.After notching a permanent status in the skateboarding orbit as Danny Garcia, he transferred his effortless style, dedication and authenticity into music. Practicing a philosophy of demystifying the process and doing it yourself, he has become a proficient multi-instrumentalist, engineer, and producer of his own and other artist's music. All streams of curiosity converge into the river.An enigma, Reverend Baron emerges from the proverbial gray overpass with no sense of urgency. He takes a sharp gaze at his surroundings and processes them through a factory of depth and gentle swag to yield a sound that sits as easy as fallen molasses on the bodega shelf. The songs are an unassuming invitation to either walk through the doorway or lean on the wall outside, either way something beautiful and rare.
Storey Littleton
“Storey Littleton’s debut solo album, “At a Diner”, is silkworm silk: a soft, luminous surface wrapped around surprising tensile strength—a cashmere sheath hiding a scalpel. Her sound is tender and light, even angelic at times, but there’s a steadiness beneath it that holds the songs in place. Quiet openings, subtle but unusual arrangements (including a recurring, liquid and smoky clarinet), and melodies that settle in without fanfare make the album feel warm and inviting, even as something sharper moves underneath.Throughout “At a Diner”, Littleton's sly lyrics take small turns that open into bigger truths. A simple observation tilts when an unexpected word is added to the end of a phrase; a question becomes a challenge; a benign description twists to accuse, perhaps to threaten. These logical and emotional jump-scares pack a punch wrapped in a whisper. Storey can sing “I’m just a child” in one song and, in another, offer a line about “posing for you on a motel bed.” The two images coexist without explication, creating a quiet echo across the album. That restraint is a choice and key to the songs’ power…by refusing a clear motive or conclusion, she makes them evergreen, open to interpretation. Littleton leaves the pieces where they fall, trusting the listener to see into them.Littleton grew up immersed in music, playing in her parents’ (Elizabeth Mitchell and Dan Littleton) family band since childhood. At a Diner gathers that early exposure into a sophisticated blend, adopting traditional musical forms and narrative frames only to upend them: in “January,” she mimics a talky teen-drama preamble à la “Leader of the Pack” but abandons the soft-focus mythologizing of the bad boy, shifting the lens back to the girls before stepping outside the scene altogether. She does something similar in “To Answer,” where the shape of a simple question transforms a sad-girl insecurity ballad into a wickedly clever censure. “At the Diner,” the album’s title track, is the earwormiest of earworms—I’d post a warning for those like me who are cursed by a contagious endless mental loop of music if the tune weren’t so delicious.Ending with “Nothing to No One Again” is genius because it’s where she admits—almost analytically—that she knows she should be in her mindless-fuckup era, yet she reaches that feeling through thought:“I didn’t give up back when I should’ve known to I want to fuck up I know I’m supposed to.”She’s both inside the chaos and just outside it, letting intellect lead her into feeling, letting care and carelessness entwine. She doesn’t frame it as revelation or lesson; she just sings it, steady and unguarded, the intellect and emotion braid together. And the song holds that tension the way silk does—a softness that distracts from, but never obscures, the strength woven underneath.”– Jenny Toomey