Lia Ices - Necima (2008)

Singer/songwriter Lia Ices took time honing her craft, releasing albums at a relaxed, thoughtful pace as her muse shifted. She moved from distant indie balladry on early releases into more electronic territory, only to return to woodsy piano-based songcraft on 2021's Family Album, her fourth album, which arrived 13 years into her discography.
Ices was born Lia Kessel and grew up in Connecticut, where she began playing piano at the age of five, although she didn't discover her penchant for songwriting until years later while studying at N.Y.U.'s famed Tisch School of the Arts' Experimental Theatre Wing. Sounding a bit like Tori Amos in a Cat Power world, Ices quickly captured attention in the area, eventually releasing the eight-song album Necima in 2008 with Nicolas Vernhes' Rare Book Room Records. Ices caught a break in 2010, signing on to indie label Jagjaguwar and beginning work on her second album. That record, Grown Unknown, was released in 2011 and featured a guest performance from Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. The next year, she released a 7" single featuring a cover of Pink Floyd's FM radio classic "Wish You Were Here" on the A-side and a lesser-known Syd Barrett cover on the flip. It would be several years before she returned in 2014 with her far more electronic-leaning third album, Ices, and more than six years after that before her next LP. After sharing several tracks in advance throughout 2020, fourth album Family Album was released in January 2021 on Ices' own Natural Music label. Family Album turned away from electronics and ethereal production in favor of more earthy sounds and organic instrumentation.