It’s morning. You’re sipping coffee, watching the sun crest over a California canyon. Or, it’s midnight. You’re crushing beers, closing down a bar somewhere on Monroe Avenue.
Either way, “Graceland Way,” Rochester-born Mikaela Davis’s latest, would be an apt soundtrack. Davis and company strain melancholy and make-believe through frontier thinking. Orville Peck — your favorite gay, Canadian cowboy — (r)ambles to mind. Davis and her band (bassist Dan Horne, drummer Austin Beede and guitarist John Lee Shannon) see a darkness, but it’s a beautifully composed, folky one; their psych-tinged alt-country songs could drift through an episode of “Westworld.”
I have to mention the harp. Davis’s signature instrument’s sound, interlaced with this dark, but also often cheerful, music — and her haunting voice — are enough to make anyone misty-eyed. Her string-plucking gives the record a mystical and singular quality that most alt-country-adjacent music simply doesn’t have.
Right away, “Graceland Way” is a high-noon showdown that dissolves into a dream.
If wishes were horses / then I’d be a cowboy / and not a rodeo clown, she sings on the upbeat, dust-kicking opener, “(Looking Through) Rose Colored Glasses.” The song features Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham on backup vocals and, apparently, comedian Tim Heidecker adding his prankish baritone somewhere in the mix (he plays the rodeo clown in the music video).
“Mizmoon” is pensive and, ahem, moonlit, ending in a burst of out-of-tune fuzz that makes you want more. The harp shines on “11:11.” And “Starlite Tonite” begins like a pop song before cascading into dark psychedelia.
Davis’s lyrics are more relatable than poetic and that’s a strength, particularly on “Junk Love,” where bad-for-you romance becomes a junk-food metaphor. And with Karly Hartzman of Wednesday on backing vocals, Davis hints at where she could go by leaning further into the noisier, indie rock end of their sound. We’d welcome it.
