Family Album

Lia Ices' creative journey has been winding and eventful. The singer/songwriter emerged out of Brooklyn in the mid-2000s with lush and distant piano-based balladry that was sad but captivating. Her second album featured guest contributions from Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and her third found her pivoting to more electronic production and fun, catchy pop. After that third LP in 2014, Ices disappeared for a time, leaving the East Coast for the West and shifting her focus from music to family. Her fourth set of songs, Family Album, returns somewhat to the melancholic piano songs of her earlier albums, but adds to them a hint of psychedelia and a more present and grounded lyrical perspective. Ices was pregnant with her first child when she began writing Family Album, and the atmosphere of the record is very much in line with the emotional landscapes experienced by expectant first-time parents. Where Ices' earlier songs felt suspended in a melancholic tension, here she sounds calm and clearhea