Photo by Joanne Kim.

Itasca Shares New video and Single “Lily” with November Tour Dates.

Itasca, the California folk musician Kayla Cohen, has shared “Lily,” the opening track to her forthcoming new album Spring, today, alongside a music video shot on Super 8.  In an essay for The Talkhouse, Cohen writes about the song’s origins, inspired by the ghostly hallucinations of a water lily she experienced on the long drive from Los Angeles to New Mexico, where she composed the songs on Spring: “There’s a trope that a songwriter loves a long drive… but there was the lily image, as a wish for psychosis or an invitation to it.” The video depicts an impressionistic dance of domesticity between mythological figures Ceres (played by Cohen), Pan, and Bes.

Itasca on Tour

Spring is out November 1 on Paradise of Bachelors and features contributions from James Elkington, Chris Cohen, and members of Bitchin’ Bajas, Gun Outfit, and Sun Araw. It also features the previously released single “Bess’s Dance,” praised as “a beguiling rumination” by The Fader.  Spring is available for pre-order from us and elsewhere (physical/digital/international options).

Itasca also announced a November tour today, beginning with a record release show at Zebulon in LA on November 13 and traveling across the country throughout the month.

11/13: Zebulon (record release show) – Los Angeles, CA
11/15: Denim Factory – Richmond, VA
11/16: Rhizome – Washington, DC
11/17: Union Pool – Brooklyn, NY 
11/18: Tubby’s – Kingston, NY 
11/19: Dirty Dungarees – Columbus, OH
11/20: Landlocked Music – Bloomington, IN
11/21: The Hideout – Chicago, IL
11/22: Acme Records – Milwaukee, WI
11/23: Moon Palace – Minneapolis, MN

Pre-Order Spring

$9.00 – $30.00

Or support via:  Bandcamp  (all formats/UK shipping) |  Other Options (physical/digital/int’l) | Local Stores  

Itasca’s Kayla Cohen wrote the anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album Open to Chance in a century-old adobe house in rural New Mexico. Inspired by the landscape and history of the Four Corners region, the sublime Spring—its title summoning both season and scarce local water sources—dowses a devotional path to high desert headwaters. Featuring contributions from Chris Cohen, Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas), James Elkington, and members of Gun Outfit and Sun Araw, Spring contains Cohen’s most quietly dazzling and self-assured set of songs to date. With color inner sleeve, lyrics, and high-res DL code.

  • Still from Lily.
  • Photo by Joanne Kim.
  • Photo by Hans F. Wagner.

Use coupon code BESS during checkout through Nov. 1 for 40% off Itasca’s prior album Open to Chance.

Use Coupon Code BESS for 40% Off “Open to Chance”

Here’s Cohen’s essay for The Talkhouse in full:

“Lily,” the video, was shot on Super 8 in Glorieta, New Mexico, and Yucca Valley, California. The camera visits the lily’s land… and there we see the appearance of some of the myth archetypes of the album, on a dreamy liminal stage. Bess the jester/dancer, Pan the enchanter, Ceres the sower/builder. The video also shows the rare spring bloom of the desert willow.

“Lily,” the story of the song, begins; I was on tour, driving between a show, somewhere in Amish Pennsylvania. I pulled off the highway to a side country road to make some instant coffee, there were people driving horses and carriages down the street. Women in the long dresses and bonnets. I found a pond and clearing to park in for a few minutes to rest, off the main dirt road. It was a low moment on tour, usually how you feel when crossing Pennsylvania or any other large eastern state, some “what am I doing with my life…” stuck in rural America. And as I rested I saw the pond next to me had lily pads on it, I felt like I had never really “seen” lily pads before, they are very Monet-ian when you encounter them in real life… and I kept looking at these lily pads and the Amish horse drivers and the absurdity of the whole thing, including my malaise, was getting to me… the lily on the water, of course. The peaceful, stylish image, the pink lily flower jumping up, opening to greet the visitor. In an algae-filled pond in the middle of the country surrounded by trash and people. 

The image stayed with me for the rest of that trip and tours following… eventually to get back to Los Angeles I had to cross the southwest, I was mostly by myself, driving really long stretches. I was doing that for a while, ten, eleven hours a day, for a couple tours later that year and then when I was in New Mexico, driving back and forth from there to LA. There’s a trope that a songwriter loves a long drive. And there’s this one stretch north of Vegas before you get into the canyon to cross into Utah, which is actually not even on the NM drive but on the route to Colorado, I’m confusing all these long drives together — but that’s where I imagined the lily ahead of me, mocking me. “See, you love getting out of the city, don’t you?” … “You really love being “on the road”, right? … you just need that great open American highway to feeel riiight…” Yes, at the time I was running from something that I didn’t want to look at… but there was the lily image, as a wish for psychosis or an invitation to it. Out of this came the song, which has such a lightness to it compared to the idea, I wanted to make it lithe, turn it “good” … the amusement with this dark place and the image of the lily as the prankster.

ACCLAIM FOR ITASCA

Kayla Cohen’s got a voice that glows like the sun at dusk, and plays acoustic guitar with a nimble yet intricate touch. 

– NPR

A beguiling rumination on the expanses she faced during the recording of the album.

– The Fader

It all suggests the balm of a gentle breeze beneath the bright sunlight, a feeling you’d want to capture indefinitely. Cohen does exactly that, suspending an instant in eternal amber. She is able to conjure up something resembling transcendence.

– Pitchfork

The mellow glow [her music] generates is reason enough to want to bask in its evanescent light for as long as life’s harsher aspects can conceivably be held at bay.

– NPR

Simultaneously spare and complex, observational folk ballads turned psychic and strange by metalstringed dissonance and troubling Symbolist metaphor.

– MOJO

Itasca’s old-soul vocals and antique acoustic guitar conjure up classic folkies from years past like Vashti Bunyan.

– Vogue