During the 2010s, guitarist
Kayla Cohen
established her solo pseudonym
Itasca
with a series of hushed, sepia-toned releases full of intricate fingerpicking and wispy reflections. The project's last two albums of the decade saw her flesh out her sound with a backing band while remaining distinctly reserved. Coming after a gap of over four years, her first album of the next decade,
Imitation of War
, finds
taking the band's sound a step further by plugging in and dipping a toe into rock territory for the first time, if a particularly hazy, heavy-lidded, and still folk-style variety of rock. At the same time, she leans even further into historical, mythological, and philosophical subject matter, as foreshadowed in song titles like "El Dorado," "Olympia," and "Moliére's Reprise." It's worth mentioning that
was produced by
Robbie Cody
(
Wand
,
Cordovas
) and features
Evan Backer
Cory Hanson
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
) on bass and
Gun Outfit
's
Daniel Swire
and
Evan Burrows
on drums. The album's opener, the ambiguous "Milk," refers to the legend of Genevieve and the mirror while introducing the meandering live feel of the record as a whole. The relatively energetic, trippy title track then picks up the pace and turns up the volume, but "relatively" is a key word here, and the set list only approaches that song's level of extroversion again on the sprawling, nearly ten-minute "Easy Spirit," a centerpiece of sorts that appears midway through Side B. Along the way, songs like the lovely "Dancing Woman," a folky entry that floats through complex modulations, and the sparse, sentimental "Under Gates of Cobalt Blue" offer moments of beauty and levity -- again relatively speaking. It all works well together sonically and conceptually, resulting in an album that is
's most cohesive and mystical yet -- and that's saying something. ~ Marcy Donelson