A Southern Gothic

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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 d ecorated 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 Show more