Pre Country by Lucy Sissy Miller

We expect fictional stories to roughly reflect our lived experiences, but a specific kind of story takes things a step further, deliberately blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. This writing philosophy applies heavily to Pre Country by Lucy Sissy Miller, a celebration of traditional Americana that doesn’t shy away from divergences into the lyrically fantastic and sonically adventurous. Just as the lyrics walk the line between fictional storytelling and biographical truth, the album sonically integrates heavy, acrobatic autotune and other prominent digital signal processing with an acoustic sound rooted in traditional acoustic guitar. After gently inviting us into this eerily familiar world, the album pulls us deeper, stripping away most semblances of tradition and leaving rich autotuned vocal textures backed by a thin yet sturdy bed of synths and field recordings. In the end, we come to peace with the ambiguity, finding the consistent emotional truth underpinning factual retellings and fantastical tales, traditional Americana and experimental electronica.