Mikaela Davis 
For her last album Mikaela Davis connected with Catskill Cosmic Country outfit Southern Star, turning her expanding role in improv and jam into a turning point for her sound. The record embraced the exploratory side of country, integrating her harp into the heat ripple rollick of the genre and spreading out the roots she’d laid down in stints with Grateful Shred and Circles Around the Sun. For her new record the Star fades away from the marquee; she’s solo but far from alone. On Graceland Way Davis picks up production help from Circles anchor point Dan Horne. He shares the production credit with John Lee Shannon, who also pops up in Circles and Grateful Shred on Guitar, and both form the backbone of the band on her new album. Friends from Clay Finch (Mapache), Madison Cunningham, Shane McCarthy (Southern Star), Frank Locrasto (Fruit Bats), James Felice (The Felice Brothers), and even Tim Heidecker all gather in to the studio, but they all remain under the sway of Davis’ streadfast songwriting.
The record opens its boundaries, both enthralled with a classic canyon country and an expanded pop palette that looks backwards to Davis’ past and forward towards a future less linked to genre. A wanderer’s tale, tugged at by the ghosts of myth, mythos, legend, and legacy, the album plucks her out of the Catskills for a taste of desert air. Dealing with the linage of the Laurel, its ghosts and grandeur, Davis can be found weaving a tapestry of longing that’s wound around the reverberations in the radio static. The album weaves between waking and dream, often letting songs dissolve into tidal codas only to emerge refreshed and unencumbered moments later in the arms of pop. While the last album will always remain a favorite, Graceland Way contains some of Davis’ best songwriting yet, from the gloss of opener “(Looking Through) Rose Colored Glasses,” to the psych of “Starlite Tonite,” the pop sheen of “Junk Love” and the trad country twang of closer “(That’s Not) Who I Wanna Be.” The latter closes out the album with a smirk and a wistful look towards the future, shirking expectations, labels, and the hands of those that would try to paint her into a corner.
Support the artist. Buy it HERE.