Review: Lydia Luce Steps Into the Spotlight With Lush and Insightful 'Dark River

The best musicians in the world are usually people you've never heard of. For every spotlighted, there are a hundred session players and sidemen whose names are only known to industry insiders or people who obsessively read liner notes (and in the age of streaming, liner notes are akin to the tintype or Victrola, if we're honest). While Lydia Luce isn't a career session player, the artists whose album she has contributed strings to (Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Eminem, Rod Stewart, Annie Lennox) are certainly more household names than she is herself. But with Dark River, Luce is finally able to step into her own spotlight.

Luce's classical training (she has a Masters in viola from UCLA and a mother who was a symphony conductor) is on full display on Dark River, but put to the service of lush orchestral accompaniment for songs that skirt the line between cosmopolitan country and AOR pop. The swelling strings provide a hypnotic wall of sound that dovetail neatly with Luce's own spellbinding vocals.

Vocally, Luce pulls the best of some iconic vocals. She channels the gentle whisper of Karen Carpenter, the perfect pitch of Dusty Springfield, the gentle croon of of Rosanne Cash. The combination hearkens back to the folk and country rock of the '70s and early '80s. But lyrically, Luce brings enough modernity to never sound like a throwback.

There is a lot of heartache throughout Dark River, influenced by a trio of traumatic events in her life. After breaking off a toxic relationship with someone battling addiction and mental illness, Luce settled down to write, only to see her home destroyed by the Nashville tornado of 2020, which was rapidly followed by the complete shutdown of the music business due to COVID-19.

The result is a set of easily digested songs (most clock in at a pop-friendly 3-3.5 minutes, with the longest running 4:36) dealing with tough subjects like mental illness, the battling relief and sense of loss at a toxic relationship's end, and persistent anxiety about what's next.

Depending on your personal tastes in roots music, Dark River might or might not be for you. If you're looking for the driving Southern rock of Jason Isbell or Drive-By Truckers, the shaggy dog humor of Todd Snider or Arlo Guthrie, or the wry social observation of John Prine, you are probably going to be disappointed. But for those who like, or are willing to look beyond, the slick '70s lushness of the arrangements to the smart and serious-minded lyrics, the reward is an intellectual look at some tough topics that is never confrontational or angry, but is always insightful.

Dark River is out now and this may be your final chance to say you “discovered” Lydia Luce before all of your friends. These songs are radio-ready enough and accessible enough to be popular on Americana or adult contemporary formats, and even into the rotation of genre-free songwriter-focused stations like Nashville's Lightning 100.