To hear some tell it, the lockdown-era migration of Californians to mountain states like Montana and Idaho compared unfavorably to the White Walkers breaching the wall in Game Of Thrones. Pure pastureland transformed into seas of babystrollers and Patagonia vests overnight, while real estate in hideaways like Bozeman went from idyllically perched to idiotically priced.
In truth, Californians have always screeched “I’ve had it!” and moved north or east. If the numbers at first looked gaudy – for every citizen who left Montana for California, four went the other way! Eek! – that’s because so few people live in Montana to begin with. An area the size of Japan that has the population density of Greenland can easily absorb 15,000 pandemic refugees, many of whom figured to stay summers only. Meanwhile, those curious enough to see a coastline or smog can trickle westward.
Alaska Reid knows the highway between the two well. She moved around frequently enough in her youth (and does to this day) that the two lifestyles have fused. Though she calls her music ‘mountain pop’, it harks to neither Joe Walsh nor John Denver. Instead of a wide lens scanning the prairie or down the slopes, it reflects isolation: scarce contact with the valley community on the other side of the range; talking to yourself out of necessity or having bored of the car-window vistas. The bond she forged with her sisters contrasts with a skepticism and an emotional standard that outsiders struggle to measure against.
On her first album as part of the band Alyeska, her make-do-with-less Montana side dominated through pragmatism. Growing up on Dinosaur Jr., her instinct was to make her band lean and Kim Gordon-ish. Unlike, say, Idaho’s Built To Spill, canyons of reverb never entered the frame. A purist, Reid insisted that every note came from a live instrument: no samples, non-traditional effects, or studio tricks.
Eventually, trips to Los Angeles countered by developing her into a part-time dreamer: going solo, hiring a manager, extensive photoshoots, a blossoming relationship with British singer/songwriter A.G. Cook. On 2021’s extended EP Big Bunny, Cook coaxed Reid out of her fundamentalist principles and into laptops and software. Now, on Disenchanter, her official full-length debut under her own name, the two-sides of the coin have bled on to each other’s halves.
Disenchanter is a synonym for her maturation and change, for becoming something other than a dual citizen. Opener “French Fries” tries to retain sisterly ties, but acknowledges, “Forget for a second that we’ve grown apart now.” “Leftover” begins by dispensing with her locational heritage: “Wash this city off my back.”
Where Big Bunny included some songs that predated Alyeska, Disenchanter straightens out the timeline and brings Reid into the present. “She Wonders” might not be its most sonically emblematic track, but it snaps together the pieces of her punk past and Joni MItchell-leaning present. Lyrically, it’s a message-in-a-bottle from an indie-rock road dog who can’t seem to affect the poses that will boost her clicks. She might not know who she is, yet, but she knows who she’s not.
Reid’s wordplay – which often has snapshot-level detail – alternately enriches and stifles the album. The sunny “Always” finds her at her most wickedly cynical (“It’s springtime / just another creature to come and die”), while the anti-classic rock “Airship” crumples old photographs: “Far away from my paved LA teens or the fresh water creeks filled with horse piss and elk teeth.” Other times, like the ‘Til Tuesday-ish “Back To This”, her breathy whispers and verbosity are like someone who’s missing all the cues to end a phone call.
Despite the ornamentation, the production is brisk and clean. Though ‘mountain pop’ connotes backpacking with an acoustic guitar, the amount of distortion and dissonance never craters or careers down unlikely paths. The work done on her previous releases ensures that everything on Disenchanter feels entirely within character and her ambitions require little audible strain. More importantly, the synthesis of her influences and background never feels like switching hats or splitting time between Montana and Patagonia, er, California.
