Album Review: Cold Moon by Alela Diane

Head here to submit your own review of this album. There's never been any shortage of confession in Alela Diane's lyrics. From 'the pirate's gospel' onwards, Diane has found it a necessity to take us into her world of pastoral happiness and tragedy and all that it encompasses, simultaneously celebrating the traditions and family aspect while bemoaning the somewhat claustrophobic effect of such close-knit groups.

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As far as introductions to albums go, it’s hard to think of many more appropriate than Alela Diane’s first words on Cold Moon: “A blue and windy day a month or so ago / was the last gasp of summertime this year,” she sings at the start of opener “Quiet Corner,” a lyric which drives straight at the album’s icy heart, where summer is but a distant, hazy memory. Diane and her fellow Portlander Ryan Francesconi conceived Cold Moon at a show in October 2014, and composed it over the course of the Pacific Northwest winter, a season that is ingrained in the bones of these songs. Cold Moon is the first full-length new release from Diane since 2013's About Farewell, a record she described as a "divorce album".

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