AMYTHYST KIAH
Wary + Strange ROUNDER
8/10
Electrifying third album from Tennessee’s daughter
As part of Rhiannon Giddens’ 2019 project Our Native Daughters, Kiah earned a Grammy nomination for best American roots song for “Black Myself”. Here the song’s original acoustic treatment is given a stonking rock makeover in the style of Alabama Shakes. Elsewhere she explores a panoply of roots-based styles on a set of unflinching songs that examine her mother’s suicide, being a black queer woman and her struggles with substance abuse. On “Fancy Drones (Fracture Me)” she wails mightily, while “Ballad Of Lost” finds her coming over like Loretta Lynn, and on the folk-pop of “Soapbox” she could pass as Tracy Chapman’s sister.