Has it really been a year since Beyond the Bloodhounds, the debut album by Adia Victoria was released?
Some of you may recall a post from last Spring where I raved about this album rather emphatically—describing its creator and her authentic 21st century take on the blues as “Jeffrey Lee Pierce reincarnated as Ronnie Spector”—and exhorting our readers to check out this fully-formed new artist while she was still touring in more intimate venues. I saw her perform at a poorly attended gig in a small rock club in Cincinnati, where despite the tiny crowd Adia Victoria and her band played a set that could’ve raised the roof off the place. It was a privilege to be there. If Beyond the Bloodhounds wasn’t the best album of 2016, well, there’s no doubt in my mind that it was, at the very least, the debut of the year, which is saying a lot. The CD hasn’t left my “speed rack” since the day I first got it. There’s not a single weak track on it.
All that and she seems like an extraordinarily literate, intellectually deep and self-aware human being. She’s as pretty as a princess, too. Adia Victoria possesses the full toolkit to become an icon. Even at this early stage in her career, it’s not too soon to expect she’ll become one of “the greats.” I reckon she’s great already, now it’s up to the public to catch on.
After touring North America—including a stellar appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—and doing the festival circuit in Europe last year, she’s releasing a new EP—three covers (two written by Françoise Hardy and one by Serge Gainsbourg) and one original number, all sung in French—titled How It Feels.
“I wanted this EP to take on a more eerie feel. Instead of the imagined dream pop girl wishing for her man to come home I reimagined the lyrics as sung by a lover scorned but still love sick and obsessed. I wanted to keep the timeless feel of these songs while breathing into them a bit of modernity; sharpen the edges a bit. What if ‘Parlez Moi de Lui’ were more of a hazy, trip out love letter from a woman still haunted by lost love. What if her in deranged mind her man still danced in and out of sight, just out of touch? I wanted to inject ‘Laissez Tomber Les Filles’ with a bit of the anger and danger I felt as a new political era descended on our country. This session would prove to be therapeutic in channeling my frustration with the current political landscape into powerful songs sung by iconic, emotional women. This EP was a way express all these feelings in a tangible way. There is so much emotionality to women that is often policed. This project gave me the chance to shake off those restrictions, free myself from my own mother tongue and speak in universal themes that flow beyond the borders of language.”
Listen to How It Feels here. Adia Victoria will be touring America this summer as the opening act for Sturgill Simpson—what a double bill that is!—but alas every date on that tour is already sold out.
“You Know How It Feels,” a mini-documentary about Adia Victoria
On the GPB Music Session
Adia Victoria performs and is interviewed by Jon Hart live in TV Studio A at KCPT in Kansas City, Missouri.