Musicians Featured:

• Alicia Walter - vocals, acoustic and electric piano

• Tabor Allen - drums

• Mike Baggetta - electric guitar (1-2, 8)

• Carey Frank - Hammond organ, Wurlitzer electric piano

• Danny Frankel - percussion

• David Givhan - electric guitar (5-7)

• Anthony Shadduck - electric & double bass

• Heather Sommerhauser - backing vocals

• Ann Thaiss - backing vocals

Cover Artwork:

• Cover art by D. Norsen

• Photography by Devin O’Brien

• Layout by David J. Woodruff

Liner Notes from T.J. Masters:

On a typically dreary day in New York City in the mid-1960s, Carole King steps out of a cab and directly into a puddle of indiscriminately gray water, right up to the ankle. The melody she’s been humming on her way to the studio promptly exits her mind, never to return.

Elsewhere on the Great Wheel of Time, after more than 15 years in the business and no fewer than 13 nominations, Elton John finally wins his first Grammy. It’s bittersweet— the tune is a cover, technically released under the umbrella of “Dionne Warwick and Friends”— but it’s a Grammy, and it’s his. On the way home from the ceremony, he stubs his toe on the front porch and drops the award, breaking it in half.

On some other revolution of the Wheel, the Sparks brothers are left to quarrel over a single pickle spear after the boy behind the deli counter stiffs them on a two-sandwich order. The tour bus leaves without them.

At every one of these moments, the dispersed mass of cosmic particulate matter that will later coagulate to form one Alicia Walter cackles— if a dispersed mass can be said to do so— and intones, “what will be is what will be.” It’s a quote that the fully-formed Alicia Walter will later attribute to Time on her second LP, Right Noise, but we know better; she wrote the song.

Of course, this is all anecdotal and there’s no way for us to know if any of it actually happened, but what we do know is that Ms. Walter (and her cosmic counterpart) have been paying attention to these and other missed opportunities. Across 32 minutes and nine songs, she consistently steps in to fill the gaps left by titanic songwriters that came before her, and the remarkable thing is that the seams are completely invisible. This, I think, can only be explained by a preternatural pre-existence that I've here pre-supposed.

Throughout the album she has a penchant for singing directly to You— even as she centers herself as narrator— and her message glows with a positivity and encouragement that evokes a kind of sepia-toned optimism. But make no mistake: this is not showtune-level cornballery. Nowhere does Ms. Walter appear as any character other than herself, and it's this first-person directness that weights the songs with confidence. Even when she questions her own position as a seer, asking, “do I know the sound of honesty?” the music belies that the universal Alicia has got the terrestrial Alicia fully swaddled in the overwhelming, unstoppable motion of the cosmos. For proof of this surety, look no further than “Father, Time.” It's sparse compared to the other tunes, evoking the meditative droning of Arthur Russell but with both a sonic and metaphysical clarity with which Mr. Russell did not imbue his own recordings.

Speaking of sonics, allow me to spare a few words for the heads without spoiling too much of the magic. The record was cut in the (now typical) BIG EGO fashion: three days of work (sometimes fewer), a band in a room, minimal overdubs. Ms. Walter's playing and singing was captured live, an impressive detail. Savvy consumers of BIG EGO's elevated tuneage will note more than a few familiar names on the back of this jacket. If there is a secret method to making records that sound timeless, Schlarb and co. have zeroed in on it with this approach to recording. The instrumentation, which is piano-heavy but balanced (Carey Frank's swirling Hammond on “Light Keeper” is a highlight) only bolsters the feeling.

And we're grateful for it, especially here. How else to conjure the universal Alicia, the timeless Alicia, the Alicia-as-guru than to be as direct in the recording process as she is in her music? The person Alicia Walter deserves no less than for us to be able to reflect back at her what she assures us is true: “It's time to stop your doubting now, 'cause you know what to do.”