A Southern Gothic

Clean sweeps of easy melody move between hushed acoustic guitar ballads and swamp rock that trades pedal steel for a sound resembling Seasick Steve’s hubcap. The same flower that decorated the flags of the Confederate army in the American Civil War grew freely in the South Carolina neighbourhood where Adia Victoria lived as a child. Raised in a devoted Seventh Day Adventist family under the shade of a magnolia tree, it equally began to symbolise her grounding; she would go outside and cover her hands in the dirt beneath the magnolia tree to overcome her creative blocks and anxieties, and would immediately feel re-centred. The Southern gothic in music and literature has traditionally excluded women of colour from its canon, and her third album seeks to become a corrective: an antidote to an alienating world within her home, the “Christ-haunted” South and a narrative that hasn’t welcomed her in despite being wholly her own. “I’m gonna let that dirt do its work,” she sings on the opening track, “I’m gonna plant myself under a magnolia.” — Loud And Quiet