“I don’t know nothin’ about Southern belles/ But I can tell you something about Southern hell…”

Last month I idly read an article about a singer/guitarist named Adia Victoria in one of the free weeklies I’d picked up in a coffee shop. It seemed like her music might be worth following up on—the article made her look really intriguing—and so I tore the page out and put it in my pocket. Back home later that day I looked her up on the Internet and read this article and then this one while I listened to her music on Soundcloud and watched her read poetry and perform live on YouTube. Since then I’ve been pushing all of my rock snob friends to look out for Adia Victoria and as her debut album, Beyond the Bloodhounds, is out via today (via Atlantic Records subsidiary Canvasback Music) I think it’s high time for me to post about her here on Dangerous Minds. I’ve been chomping at the bit to write about Adia Victoria for weeks to be honest, but I wanted to wait until the record came out.

Adia Victoria’s gestalt can be summed up in a musical Venn diagram wherein PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple and Hank Williams meet Jack White, Chelsea Wolfe, St. Vincent, Gary Clark Jr. and Patti Smith. She’s an incredible guitarist. In her songwriting she has a remarkable talent for getting straight to the point. Her literate lyrics are sharply observed; direct yet intangible, so the listener can project themselves onto her poetry. (Neil Young is a master at this, obviously, and so is she.) I’ve read that she’s heavily influenced by blues singer Victoria Spivey—and Nirvana—and this makes sense.

Her blues is an authentic 21st century Southern gothic blues. Would you press play if I described Adia Victoria as “Jeffrey Lee Pierce reincarnated as Ronnie Spector”?

Well, you’d be a fucking idiot if you didn’t, wouldn’t you?
 

 
Listen to “Stuck in the South” first:
 

 
Tell me that song isn’t going to be used in ten thousand Hollywood movies from here until the end of time. It’s what songwriters call an annuity. (I just hope that True Blood doesn’t snag it first. I hate that fuckin’ show.) The way the guitar starts and almost stumbles at the beginning, I thought was an especially deft touch, evoking, as it does, a blind blues picker sitting on a rocking chair. I was already hooked by that point and the child had not yet opened her voice to sing.
 

 
Last January, after being tagged as one of their “10 New Artists You Need to Know,” Adia Victoria told Rolling Stone:

“I think I bring to the table a voice not given much attention. As a marginally employed, self-driven woman of color there aren’t many microphones being shoved in my face or chances to speak my own truth. Perhaps people should check out my music to find that the superficial differences that society erects between people are just that — not real. You might just find you have more in common with the girl handing you your burger at the drive through than the gilded millionaire on the radio trying to twerk her way into relevancy.”

At last: A rock star who speaks for the Bernie Sanders generation…

Adia Victoria is going to become a major star, perhaps within just a few months. How many new artists arrive this fully-formed these days? (The album, co-produced with Roger Moutenot, took three years to record.) An appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is coming in June. NPR loves her. Rolling Stone noticed her after she’d released but a single song. I can’t wait to read the MOJO review and expect that Beyond the Bloodhounds will feature near the top of many “best of 2016” lists. Shit, French people are going to go nuts over her. Adia Victoria is on her “Me & the Devil” tour through the U.S. and Europe right now. She’ll be playing in New York City at the Mercury Lounge on the 19th and the extensive tour looks like it will probably take her to a city near you. Austin. Boston. Pittsburgh. Los Angeles. San Francisco. She’ll be in London in July. See her now in intimate venues because that’s not gonna last.
 

 
She told Wondering Sound about her live act:

“There will be moments where you feel uncomfortable, where you feel that you’re looking at something that you’re really not supposed to see. And that’s what I want to show people. I want you to take a look at what certain [life] experiences can do to a person. I want you to look and see it, because it’s not something you see walking down the street. It’s taboo. No one’s talking about the stuff that I’m singing about, and that’s why I felt compelled [to do it]. I have to sing about this shit, because there’s people out there living this shit.”

 
Listen to the guitar rave-up in “Dead Eyes.” Doesn’t that remind you of the lift-off moment of Sonic Youth’s “Death Valley 69” and a Gun Club song at the same time? That’s not an easy thing to do! Obviously Adia Victoria is a shit hot guitarist, but dig what her badass band—bassist Jason Harris, keyboardist Alex Caress, drummer Tiffany Minton and Mason Hickman on guitar—is capable of. The interplay is impressive. I found that if I concentrated on what the drummer was doing—check her out, she’s like Charlie Watts—her beat led me to appreciate what the bass player was up to. They’re one hell of a tight band. Each of her side players approached the bandleader after seeing her perform and telling her they’d like to play with her. And it sounds like it.
 

 
The Portishead-esque “Howlin’ Shame”

 
“Heathen” at SXSW this year: