Itasca Shares Werner Herzog-Inspired “Only a Traveler” Video.

“Kayla Cohen’s got a voice that glows like the sun at dusk.” – NPR
She is able to conjure up something resembling transcendence.” – PITCHFORK
“Itasca’s old-soul vocals and antique acoustic guitar conjure up classic folkies from years past like Vashti Bunyan.” – VOGUE
“Gentle and placid, but with a deep ache at its center.” – STEREOGUM
“[Spring is] a high form of musical travel memoir, melding the beauty of place with a sense of self.” – UNCUT lead review (8/10)
“Spring is an album of deep spirits and scorched nature, a place of fragile security, but also deep discovery.” – MOJO lead review (4/5)

Itasca‘s new album Spring is due out next week, and today Kayla Cohen shares a final advance listen of the record, via new single and video “Only a Traveler.” Going along with Spring‘s overarching story of escaping Los Angeles for the quiet meditation of rural New Mexico, Cohen says “Only a Traveler” “describes the conflict between the city mindset and the desire to walk out onto the furthest mesa untethered.” Thanks to Folk Radio for the premiere.

Cohen directed the video, shot on Super 8 in both California and New Mexico. “It’s influenced heavily by the opening sequence in Heart of Glass, the film by Werner Herzog, which shows blurred scenes of Bavaria, Germany and Yellowstone National Park, against a soundtrack by Popol Vuh,” she says. “Heart of Glass was a ‘visual key’ for my understanding of how video can interface with music. In the case of ‘Only a Traveler,’ I hope the viewer can allow and enter a meditative state, to contemplate the slow movement and soft colors of the film.”

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 will play a hometown record release show at Zebulon in LA on November 13, followed by a cross-country tour throughout November.

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.

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”

ACCLAIM FOR ITASCA

Many thanks to MOJO and Uncut for the fabulous lead reviews.

4 stars (Filter review). A desert country waltz of unreality that feels simultaneously haunting and heavenly. Spring is, ultimately, an ambient album, an intimate listening experience of transformation but also uncertainty, attuned to the dead voices and silences of those ancient landscapes and the young woman who now inhabits them. Mercurial and avian, it is a hazy path through a dusty landscape of sadness and enlightenment that never arrives at answers or certainties, but shimmers with an eternal mystery. 

– MOJO

8/10 (lead review). It’s a high form of musical travel memoir, melding the beauty of place with a sense of self. Spring is like a handspun fabric, stunning to behold in full, but astonishingly meticulous when viewed up close, evidence that often the most easygoing work requires a tremendous amount of thought and editing.

– UNCUT lead review 

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

– NPR

Sublime spectral folk from Kayla Cohen, conceived in the canyons and pueblos of New Mexico and subtly gilded by the likes of Cooper Crain and James Elkington.

– Uncut

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

– The Fader

Cohen’s pure cactus-water voice and sense of cosmic wonderment … leave intriguing tracks to follow.

– Q

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