Heather Trost - Petrichor (2020)

Petrichor is New Mexico-based artist Heather Trost’s second or third solo full-length. Petrichor is fresh, unique, and really fucking good. Sonically, this modern psychedelic pop music is as experimental as it is accessible. Petrichor was recorded between 2018 and 2019 by Heather Trost and her husband Jeremy Barnes at their home studio. The two are community activists, urban gardeners, and full-time musicians.

Trost has an impressive body of work, notably in collaboration with husband Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel) on their own record label Living Music Duplication, and their dazzling and uncategorizable Eastern European folk-influenced band A Hawk And A Hacksaw, where she sings and plays violin, autoharp, keyboards, and other instruments. In the last two decades, Trost has toured and recorded with dozens of artists, including Beirut, Josephine Foster, Thor and his Friends, Claire Cronin, and the Swans. Fans of A Hawk And A Hacksaw might be surprised at how different Trost sounds; she describes the difference as working in “two different languages.” Trost explains that “recording music and writing songs reminds me of making a collageor a quilt.”