Josephine Foster - The Mermaid's Treasure Chest

A pale, slight, preadolescent mise. A diaphanous young girl on the verge of blossoming. Hair straight and taut as a raven's wing. Loose, dark, one-piece garments that swallow up her shape until it's rendered impalpable. Catch sight of her wandering by night, in the moonlight, and you might mistake her for the ghost of Emily Dickinson. But, as is so often the case, appearances deceive: although she plays a timeless kind of music, Josephine Foster is one of the most eminent singer-songwriter figures of her generation, a girl with both feet firmly planted in the present, one of the leading lights (alongside Marissa Nadler, Joanna Newsom, Jana Hunter and Espers) of the New Weird America movement, in some ways the female counterpart to Devendra Banhart.

Raised in Colorado, where by the age of fifteen she was already a professional singer whose sharp, finely chiselled voice brightened up the most varied events (from weddings to funerals, taking in every other kind of religious service along the way), she abruptly dropped out of art school (an "opera-school dropout," as she would later call herself) and eventually settled in Chicago, where, step by step, she worked out a musical theory devoted to tearing down the barriers - incomprehensible to her - that separate "high" music from popular tradition. Revisiting lieder and classical arias with arrangements and instrumentation borrowed, depending on the piece, from early jazz, acoustic blues, acid-folk or Native American ceremonial music, Foster adapted her howling, spectral soprano - built on free micro-tonal variations and theremin-like melismas - and her spare, evocative picking, open to flights of fancy and digression, to the freak-folk aesthetic in vogue in the 2000s.

Across the four albums released under her own name (the first, All The Leaves Are Gone, is credited to Josephine Foster and The Supposed), this compositional labyrinth has often verged on the masterpiece: her approach to psychedelic folk is ubiquitous, kaleidoscopic, minimalist, at once as simple and intricate as the design of an origami, an esoteric thread that unspools, absorbing everything it encounters along its journey without ever betraying its original shape — the train trailing from the dress of a ghostly bride, in which the songs remain tangled, winding here and there under the spell of some strange mesmeric power.

To this day, Foster alternates her live activity (she has played practically everywhere across America, Australia, Europe and Canada) with teaching music. Her performances, drawing partly on 1960s American avant-garde theatre and on Cage's "concerted action," are sometimes staged in natural or non-musical settings (squares, streets, places of worship), aiming to dissolve the fixed roles of stage and audience by inviting spectators, whenever possible, to take part directly in the event, playing whatever instruments they have on hand and creating comical, ever-evolving versions of her songs. In Italy too, in 2007, she gave some memorable performances, such as those at the Rocca di Bazzano near Bologna and in a deconsecrated church in Padua.

On the Strings of the Ukulele

Her debut on the scene in 2003 saw multi-instrumentalist Josephine Foster (guitar, piano, harmonium, harp, ukulele, vocals) alongside Andy Bar (bass and guitar) in The Children's Hour, a folk-loving duo with a strong indie-rock sensibility, whose name was "borrowed" from an obscure 19th-century American poet. Their first (and only) full-length, SOS JFK, came out on the prestigious Rough Trade, offering soft, sun-kissed melodies and alluring female vocals reminiscent of the quieter, more acoustic side of Cat Power.

Next came another duo, Born Heller, with Josephine teaming up with Jason Ajemian. For the self-titled album (Locust, 2004), none other than Paul Oldham was enlisted, in that same Louisville already the cradle of bands like Slint, For Carnation, and June Of '44.

Foster takes up the ukulele, Ajemian the stand-up bass, while both sing and play acoustic guitar. The result is eleven acoustic sketches, swinging between lethargic languor ("Mountain Song," "Big Sky") and rustic blues-folk vignettes ("Good Times," "The Left Garden"). "I Am A Guest In Here," meanwhile, is a poem recited by Foster in a lofty register, punctuated by sparse guitar chords. A collection of subtly dissonant, disorienting lullabies that already projects the Chicago siren into other corners of American indie-(folk)rock.

More firmly anchored in the classic psychedelia of Jefferson Airplane is the album released that same year with the Supposed, All The Leaves Are Gone, again on Locust.

Foster's operatic soprano unfolds over taut guitar weaves (starting with the opener "Well-Heeled Man"), where acoustic and electric guitars duel it out, punctuated by drumming far more pronounced than in her later work. A rock record, then, one reportedly conceived at first as a "musical," yet one that already bears the imprint of Appalachia, a mark that would brand Foster's entire body of work.

For all its unevenness, the tracklist holds more than one delight: from the forlorn title track ("There is no end/ to your sorrow"), where rivers of melancholy warm themselves against the sound of an exotic guitar, to the anguished "Deathknell," with Foster's voice seeming almost to choke in her throat, all the way to the riffs and guitar-voice counterpoints of the fiery "Jailbird (Hero Of The Sorrow)" and the almost Buckley-esque flights of "Who Will Feel Better At The Days End?"

Some guitar excess occasionally throws off the balance of an album that, overall, mainly showcases Foster's crystalline talent and her highly personal way of interpreting songs — only a distant relative of folk muses like Joan Baez and Shirley Collins. Josephine studied operatic singing, and it shows, but she doesn't use her technique to embellish or induce an effect of dreamy oblivion the way CocoRosie do: the directionality of her voice is such that it becomes a driving force, a magic flute, the engine of a sorcery that enchants the world and moves it at will.

Folk on an Art Nouveau Canvas

Buoyed also by early positive reviews, Foster went solo and, again on Locust, a year later put together a new collection of songs, this time leaning much more decisively toward traditional folk: Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You (2005).

The refinement of the record is apparent from the cover alone, its burnished background dominated by the green lines of an allegory in which a woman seems to offer herself as a guide to the mystery of a nature at once familiar and arcane. Like a rarefied echo of the art nouveau style found in sixties/seventies psychedelic graphics, but with an added sense of balance and a certain formal poise.

The music held within this reliquary has a structural and arrangement freedom that recalls psychedelia, folk's attentiveness to a world stripped of ornament, and an extreme stylization — in the abstract force of the operatic voice and the dry guitar strumming — that evokes the refinement of art nouveau, with its slender, powerful, elegant arboreal curves stretching into an unreal space.

The material here is a kind of timeless folk, almost with a sense of archaic magic hovering over the whole album. This comes through in the lyrics, which take on the forms and images of a poetry suspended between the symbolic, the pagan and the frankly popular, but above all through a supple voice, always ready for variations that bring surprising contrasts of timbre and interpretation without undermining the work's unity. The arrangements are eclectic yet essential, spare yet pulsing, graced by unusual choices that see voice and guitar accompanied by harp, bells, zither, castanets, kazoo, ukulele, sitar and wooden spoons among others (nearly all played by Foster herself). They are further elevated by a restrained yet richly detailed sense of structure, full of small, unexpected variations, both in the arpeggios and in the very construction of certain songs. The spare production, meanwhile, lends the album's inner movement a dynamic sense of space.

Besides the aching title track, standout moments include the ballads "Stones Throw From Heaven" and "There Are Eyes Above", with their pastoral, almost gospel mood; the childlike nursery-rhyme feel of "Crackerjack Fool" (the album had originally been conceived as a collection for children); and the haunting melody of "Trees Lay By", while "Good News" stands out as the liveliest track of the bunch and the kazoo solo on "The Golden Wooden Tone" adds a charming touch of eccentricity.

Two years pass, and Josephine embarks on her boldest venture yet.

A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing/Ein Wolf In Schafspelz (2006) is in fact entirely centred on reinterpreting literary and musical works of the Romantic era (from Schubert to Eichendorff, from Wolf to Brahms and Goethe). It marks a further evolution in the music of this artist who loves ancient, arcane sounds that are never forgotten, a vanished world set aside by a present day that kicks the past away without ever grasping its true meaning, musical or otherwise.

The atmosphere is that of a medieval kingdom haunted by demons singing acid, dreamlike dirges, plagued by piercing noises from unknown instruments. The foreign element that makes this musical microcosm so disorienting is the electric guitar, almost always in (pleasing) contrast with Josephine's enchanted chords. The musician in question is Brian Goodman, already featured on All The Leaves Are Gone.

The opening "An Die Musik" starts out calm, with the voice weaving deftly through classical chords, while Goodman's electric guitar never lets up for a moment, continually tearing through Josephine's free melodic flow. The solemn "Der König in Thule" is a tale told in broken, disfigured words: the notes lose themselves along forsaken paths, and the a cappella ending sends a shiver of mysterious dread. "Verschwiegene Liebe" flows like a cursed fairy tale, punctuated by gusts of poisoned air and icy timbres. A rainy day lurks in the background of the following "Die Schwestern", again a faithful dualism between electric and classical guitar, with vocalises that seem like drops of clear water flowing in a pure little stream. "Wehmut" is enriched by a mournful piano and an accordion that flutters happily.

But the real tour de force of the album is "Auf Einer Burg": almost 12 minutes of psychedelic, devilish improvisation. The guitar din conjures an infernal obsession, with a vocal moan that radiates pain and suffering, while the electronic crackle delivers the finishing blow at the close. To let us catch our breath and recover some oxygen, the cheerful "Näne Des Geliebten" is placed at the end, an immediate, skipping little fable, amid carefree choruses and chords played with a swaying rhythm.

A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing/Ein Wolf In is Josephine Foster's boldest and most profound album, the latest stage in an artistic journey of unmistakable quality and boundless future prospects. A journey through arcane whispers and wandering souls, deep throats and multicoloured sunsets, forgotten stories and endless roads.

The dreamcatcher

With This Coming Gladness (Bo' Weavil, 2008), on the other hand, Foster moves closer to her own highly personal brand of "transcendental art-rock".

It opens with the evocative "The Garden Of Earthly Delight": a kind of "dreamcatcher" woven from Appalachian picking and indeterminate spasms in the background, able to release through its weave all the singular enchantment of an operatic undertone. Over an almost imperceptible jazzy rhythm, "The Lap Of Your Lust" sparingly drips psychedelic wah and twang effects, while the vocals trace a melodic rainbow between melisma, mantra and psalmody. "Lullaby To All" and "I Love You And The Springtime Blues" flash disjointed blues horizons. On "All I Wanted Was The Moon" the tropes of alt-country are rarefied and dreamlike, like a dawn glimpsed an instant before falling asleep, in a kind of gypsy elegy. "Waltz Of Green" strums a dizzying Celtic sirtaki, while "Sim Nao" takes root amid raga-rock arabesques (guitars) and Latin jazz (rhythm section).

On "Second Sight" the ghost of a noblewoman condemned to relive the nightmare of her own death every night howls a Norman ballad pierced by razor-slashes of feedback that feel like dazzling lightning bolts frozen in the grey of a stormy sky. "Indelible Rainbows" is a Victorian parlour ballad arranged like an acoustic raga-folk piece by the Velvet Underground (whether it's the jingling bells in the background or the muffled drum thuds that recall "All Tomorrow's Parties" a little).

With purity of intent and an innate, understated grace, Josephine Foster offers a personal and unprecedented reading of Emily Dickinson's intense, solitary poetics on Graphic As A Star (2009), managing to render those "silken syllables" of the great American poet (Stefania Felicioli's most fitting phrase), that immense force so often woven from threads of raw analysis and wefts of diaphanous tenderness.

These are small, spectral, melancholy gems, sung with voice alone or accompanied by an acoustic guitar and sometimes a harmonica, built around a core drawn from the lyrics of Emily Dickinson. Right from the opening "Trust In The Unexpected", which could have been written by Devendra Banhart with his heart swollen with emotion for William Kidd, and continuing into the following "How Happy Is The Little Stone", Josephine's stylistic choice is clear: she moves with delicacy and respect, transfiguring the mystery of Dickinson's secluded life and bending it toward a stark, desert-like folk.

"Beauty Crows Me Till I Die" seems to carry within it the genetic heritage of Shirley Collins and the research she conducted, together with her late sister Dolly, into that vocal essentialism of the purest tradition. Nonetheless, the spiritual ascesis of this and other tracks like "Wild Nights – Wild Nights!" burns in the heart like campfires: the voice alone extracts these small gems from time that seems to bend, a shifting signifier. "Ah Tenerife" hurls itself into an aura with neither time nor space, carrying its vocal suggestions toward a melancholy introspection.

The folk guitar, played with the seemingly distracted but lucid intent of someone who sees the sonic planes clearly, accompanies tracks in which the legacy of Joan Baez, of Dylan, or even Lawrence Hammond is evident, complete with harmonica: "Tell As A Maskman – Were Forgotten" is a thoroughly successful example of this.

A scant year goes by before Josephine Foster embarks on a new, ambitious venture: a reinterpretation, together with Victor Herrero, of songs written by Federico Garcia Lorca. Anda Jaleo is a collection of stories recounting a varied humanity, which her voice depicts with spare, graceful timbres, while her vocal versatility makes the alternation between the more intimate, poetic pieces and the songs most steeped in political and social overtones feel fluid, all of it sketched out with minimal instrumentation and a stunning live recording.

Backed by clear, crystalline acoustic guitars, handclapping and castanets to create a sonic environment of great emotional impact, Josephine Foster and Victor Herrero frame Federico Garcia Lorca's songs with the same effectiveness with which the Surrealists put his poetic force on canvas. Every sonic space evokes Spain; joy and melancholy settle on sparse notes that carry the grandeur of an orchestra, while the land, the gypsies, the girls and the bullfighters are the protagonists of stories that highlight social and political hardship without ever being overt about it.

Mysterious and full of allure on "Los Mozos de Monleon", evocative and delicate on "Los Reyes De La Baraja", deftly political on "Anda Jaleo" - Josephine Foster's new album is yet another artistic triumph, a work that oozes research and cultural depth with a lightness and lofty tone unknown to other contemporary musicians. Beauty triumphs here, dressed in poetry and truth.

Josephine Foster's music has something occult and transcendent about it, something austere yet caressing: it's a sensory deprivation tank, an out-of-body experience by proxy. Her approach to psychedelic folk is ubiquitous, kaleidoscopic, minimalist, at once simple and as intricate as the design of an origami figure. The voice comes first: a butterfly still bound in the last threads of its cocoon, rising in a soft, tormented flight full of swirls and air pockets, an esoteric weave that unravels as it absorbs everything it encounters along the way without ever betraying its original shape. Her guitar playing and compositional technique seem like the train trailing from a ghost bride's dress, in which the songs remain caught, snaking here and there under the grip of some strange mesmeric power.

Having just released her second Iberian collection, Josephine leaves her Andalusian refuge behind to return home and record the new Blood Rushing, an album that gives off a brazen whiff of the States from the unmistakable allegory of its cover art, a personal pictorial reworking of her own national flag. The thin red thread linking fields and firmament is the headlong flow of blood - or of wine, going by the insistent refrain of "O Stars" - which is the very essence of a proud, untamable nature.

It's her diary we're leafing through, tonal miniatures and jottings of an astral mysticism. A bucolic compendium recalling the carefree Arcadia of Vashti Bunyan, but with deeply American settings and symbolic trappings. It's an evident mark in the populist bent of certain ballads, an alt-country that doesn't shy away from gospel flourishes and redeems the greater predictability of the songwriting with all the class and assurance of the singer, not to mention the fine, supple embellishments of her guitar. As usual, the bare picking opens up into a wealth of digressions. She pares things down to the bone yet still can't resist dressing up the weave with arcane, unexpected touches, making an album that is otherwise marked by a peremptory classicism feel lively and at times even eccentric. Simple and simply arranged yet thoroughly captivating, the gallop of "Sacred Is the Star" is the emblematic manifesto of this unprecedented easy-listening approach: melodious, skipping folk, a killer refrain decked out in skins and mandolins, a free pass for the ears of any listener. Even when she slows the pace and works more deeply on the shape of the embroidery, the songwriting remains as penetrating and assured as ever.

Natural and alluring, yet Josephine remains elusive. Slippery when, at the moment of farewell, she chooses to set country-blues and psych-folk bickering against each other, hitting the mark with innate frankness.

Blood Rushing is her sudden pop colic. Flighty. Ambiguous. Nervous, ethereal, lush. Fragile like the lofty, moving Electrelane of farewell. Stony too. Eruptive and headlong in its avant-folk little dress, letting loose with a few electric outbursts the way Gorky's Zygotic Mynci used to manage in the throes of a rock bender. Or slight and woodland-like in that enchantress guise à la Joanna Newsom, which has suited her perfectly ever since the days of New Weird America.

Ethereal and outside any temporal placement, Josephine Foster's music belongs to childhood (her output includes an album of children's songs, "Little Life"), to memories and to hope. I'm A Dreamer (2013) is yet another demonstration of Foster's will to erase the gap between high and popular music. Her historiographical and sonic research travels along a single track where every stylistic choice becomes an element of an artistic purity that can only enchant and seduce: her take on the great American musical tradition is now more orthodox than the spectral minimalism of her early output, and the songwriting is more pliable and passionate.

Recorded in Nashville, Foster's new project opens the door to torch-song jazz, evoking the smoky atmospheres of brothels and saloons: among the musicians, the presence of Micah Hulscher stands out (previously in the service of Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson), a classically and jazz-trained pianist in love with the American tradition. Micah's graceful touch and firm tone underscore Foster's compositions: the gracefulness of "My Wandering Heart" and the poetry of "I'm A Dreamer" glide by with a class that also makes "Magenta" one of the album's creative peaks, where voice, piano and bass vibrate in unison with the songwriter's voice for a moment of pure, intense pleasure.

More accessible and seductive, the album boasts solid songwriting, even if the languor of "No One's Calling Your Name", the bohemian tone of "This Is Where The Dreams Head, Maude" and the melodrama of "Amuse A Muse" (Nico meets Dolly Parton) stand out like dust dragged by the wind across the remains of an abandoned house.

Vigorous and delightful, I'm A Dreamer avoids cliché even in its lyrics, which turn familiar places and situations into photo-frames of great impact and beauty, offering the chance to widen her audience without sacrificing quality or depth - in short, brushing up against perfection.

Three years later, Josephine Foster revisits, with the same interpretive key, old pages of her recording career, giving shape to the beguiling and austere No More Lamps In The Morning, one of her boldest albums, in which the artist pushes toward the same vocal purity as Tim Buckley and Karen Dalton, well supported by the ever more daring nylon-string guitar chords of Victor Herrero.

As many as three songs come from This Coming Gladness, almost as if to underline the gap between past and present; the voice proceeds without fear or hesitation, amid trills and harmonic flourishes, lending "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", "A Thimbleful Of Milk" and "Second Sight" that operatic aura which seems to be the benchmark of the expressive maturity reached by the American musician.

The seven tracks of No More Lamps In The Morning are pure poetry, a distillate of spirituality and mystery, where amid funereal chants and cabaret atmospheres she cites Rudyard Kipling ("Blue Rose") and James Joyce (the title track) with the same reckless passion.

An album that won't be remembered for its innovations, but for the operatic sublimation that has set free splendid folk creations, which no longer smell of revival, but of neo-classicism.

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