Those unfamiliar with the name
Maia Friedman
may actually know her from at least one of the collaborations or indie bands to her credit, including the
Partisan Records
collective
Bobby
, the short-lived dream pop outfit
Uni Ika Ai
, long-running experimental pop project
Dirty Projectors
, and the soft rock trio
Coco
. While
Friedman
is valued as a multi-instrumentalist, her remarkably articulate and soothing voice is an attraction of its own, and, when combined with her lyrical compositional skills, it's surprising that she didn't step forward with a solo album until 2022, at least ten years into her career. That's when she released the highly melodic dream pop LP
Under the New Light
, her
Last Gang Records
debut. The follow-up,
Goodbye Long Winter Shadow
, sheds many of her debut's layered synthesizers and effects in favor of an elegant set of intimate chamber pop that incorporates strings, woodwinds, piano, percussion, and acoustic guitar as well as spare electric guitar, drum programming, and synths. It was produced by
Phil Weinrobe
(
Adrianne Lenker
,
Florist
Tomberlin
) and
's
Oliver Hill
Pavo Pavo
Vagabon
). Consisting of 15 brief songs and instrumentals across a playing time of just 31 minutes,
's timeless songwriting and literary inspirations nonetheless play out like an epic. "Happy" is an appropriate introduction that pulls listeners into the album's orchestral, romantic dreamworld. Parts '70s singer/songwriter,
Sondheim
, and
Debussy
, the song consists entirely of the repeated lines, "I don't want to fall asleep/Take me where you want to go/And I'll be happy." Amid song titles like "In a Dream It Could Happen" and "A Heavenly Body" are wistfully warm entries like "Vessel," whose fingerpicked guitar, atmospheric woodwinds, and partly hummed melody soften regrets like the supernatural-tinged, "I wanted to be/A window to everything you couldn't see/A mirror to reflect your beauty," and "On Passing," which remembers, "You laughed until tears were falling/Falling into a mouth/You didn't have to feed anymore." Some diversions along the twilight-lit way include the utterly creepy, wordless "Foggy," with its out-of-tune toy piano and hummed lullaby, and the jazzy "A Long Straight Path All the Way to the River Rock," which edits toddler chatter to intermittent saxophone. Otherwise endlessly tender, the album closes on "Witness," a more fully arranged song with bass and drum kit that reiterates, "What you've witnessed/Through gentle eyes/Is enough for many lifetimes" for its consoling, a cappella coda. ~ Marcy Donelson