Alicia Walter - Right Noise (2023)

Throughout the album Alicia has a penchant for singing directly to You— even as she centers herself as narrator— and her message glows with a positivity and encouragement that evokes a kind of sepia-toned optimism. But make no mistake: this is not showtune-level cornballery. Nowhere does Ms. Walter appear as any character other than herself, and it's this first-person directness that weights the songs with confidence. Even when she questions her own position as a seer, asking, “do I know the sound of honesty?” the music belies that the universal Alicia has got the terrestrial Alicia fully swaddled in the overwhelming, unstoppable motion of the cosmos. For proof of this surety, look no further than “Father, Time.” It's sparse compared to the other tunes, evoking the meditative droning of Arthur Russell but with both a sonic and metaphysical clarity with which Mr. Russell did not imbue his own recordings.

Speaking of sonics, allow me to spare a few words for the heads without spoiling too much of the magic. The record was cut in the (now typical) BIG EGO fashion: three days of work (sometimes fewer), a band in a room, minimal overdubs. Ms. Walter's playing and singing was captured live, an impressive detail. Savvy consumers of BIG EGO's elevated tuneage will note more than a few familiar names on the back of this jacket. If there is a secret method to making records that sound timeless, Schlarb and co. have zeroed in on it with this approach to recording. The instrumentation, which is piano-heavy but balanced (Carey Frank's swirling Hammond on “Light Keeper” is a highlight) only bolsters the feeling.

And we're grateful for it, especially here. How else to conjure the universal Alicia, the timeless Alicia, the Alicia-as-guru than to be as direct in the recording process as she is in her music? The person Alicia Walter deserves no less than for us to be able to reflect back at her what she assures us is true: “It's time to stop your doubting now, 'cause you know what to do.”