MIKAELA DAVIS - Graceland Way

For Mikaela Davis, singularity is a hazy point somewhere in the hills of Chevy Chase Canyon, a spot tucked away in Los Angeles County where time slows down and the outside world fades away. It's a magical space that the harpist and singer-songwriter from Catskill, in New York State, has adopted as a figurative Eden from which to draw inspiration for the ten songs at the heart of "Graceland Way", the fourth album of a career that began back in 2012, when she was just twenty.
"Graceland Way" is, specifically, the fruit of weeks spent watching the twilight fall over the hills, as Davis recounts, "surrounded by the totemic presence of the studio's black cat: the tireless Bubu, a symbol of magical luck and quiet protection". All in all, a fitting backdrop for a harpist who grew up listening to Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, but also Paul Simon and, of course, Elvis.

The idea of writing urban-cowboy songs built around the harp came to Mikaela after discovering Joanna Newsom, with whom she has virtually nothing in common apart from playing, obviously, the same instrument. The songs on "Graceland Way" draw more than anything on Sheryl Crow and Juice Newton, and you only need to listen to "Nothin's On The Radio" and the album-opening single "(Looking Through) Rose Colored Glasses" respectively to get the picture — the kind of song that, in an ideal world, would be all over summer radio rotation and beyond.
If the opening one-two punch is a driving country-pop gallop, the following "11:11" and "Wild Flower" are two thoroughly successful ballads with an almost cosmic bent, Davis's voice thinning out into a purr while harp and synth weave gracefully in the background. The latter in particular is one of those ballads made for sunset listening, complete with a tide-like hiss that could pass for a field recording.
One could also point to other queens of the new urban-cowboy "scene" as reference points, like Californian Pearl Charles, given that the loping, lunar trot of "Starlite Tonite" essentially links the two young singer-songwriters, before "Junk Love" returns to the more typical Crow-esque template.

Made with Dan Horne and John Lee Shannon of Circles Around the Sun, Davis's first band, "Graceland Way" was recorded at Uhf Studio in Glendale, California, and boasts a genuinely impressive roster of guests, including Karly Hartzman (of Wednesday), James Felice (of the Felice Brothers), Madison Cunningham and Tim Heidecker. All pulling together to fine-tune Mikaela's dawn-lit visions, from pure Americana moments like "The Wrong Way", which sounds like it crawled out of some dusty jukebox along Highway 61, to new piano ballads given fresh life by James Felice's accordion taking the lead in the closing stretch.
"Graceland Way" is the album with which Mikaela Davis has finally squared the circle, found her own rodeo within the world of music. A record with no dips and, above all, free of any filler. No small achievement for a songwriter as refined as she is lovably wild.   

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07/07/2026