ALELA DIANE - Cusp

"Oregon-based singer-songwriter Alela Diane Menig’s outstanding fifth album is the result of her confronting what she sees as one of the more ridiculous remaining artistic taboos – that women should not write songs about having babies. The singer has form when it comes to going deep – 2013’s melancholy About Farewell documented her painful break-up from husband and band-member Tom Bevitori – and Cusp gains much from exploring motherhood’s agonies as well as ecstasies.

Her thoughtful, dreamy vocals drift across a grand piano, providing both pretty and wistful songs with emotional wallop. Never Easy finds a new appreciation of her own mother; So Tired addresses the fatigue of labour; Threshold and Moves Us Blind are sublime ruminations on the passage of time...The album title comes from Menig’s near-death during childbirth, and her subsequent realisation that we are forever “on the cusp” between death and life, heartbreak and euphoria, all of which are in fulsome supply here." - The Guardian