Photo by Kilian Krieger

Artist: Allegra Krieger

Location: New York, New York

Buzz: The fine art of observation through song is a slow nurture process, and Allegra Krieger’s craft of penning strange wonderments about the lives we live have been giving that art all of the space needed to grow since her 2020 debut, The Joys of Forgetting. Now four albums into her career with the release of the songwriter’s breakthrough latest full-length, Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine, Krieger is sewing season as the worlds she’s lived through come together, or fall apart, depending on the angle of perspective.

Maybe more so the latter if there’s honesty behind the matter, as Krieger stares down our respective inevitable paths toward death (following a brush with it of her own) and the collective societal decay we must sift through happening in the meantime. Don’t let the morbidity of it all bring you down, however, as Krieger’s sound — an insular, woven work of mesmerizing electric indie folk that inhabits spaces quiet, noisy, or somewhere rustling headspaces in the in-betweens — is neither that of a resolute subscription to a gothic lifestyle nor some twist on dark humor, though she does slip into lyrical moments that would make the specter of Steve Albini in a hypothetical afterlife nod in approval.

There’s a profound awe for the human condition through all of the chaos in its constant perseverance for deeper meaning in this lifetime, be it the connections around us or how we ascribe meaning to what we do, though we know it’s all fleeting. Maybe Krieger doesn’t have all of the answers in her songs, but she leaves her own impermanent mark on the listener to join in on the wonder.

Sound: An existential crisis come slow and easy with a warm cup of coffee and just the right room ambiance for the occasion.

Recommended: “Never Arriving”, “I’m So Happy I Cannot Face Tomorrow”, and “Into Eternity” from her recently released album, Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine

Allegra Krieger’s Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine is available now on Double Double Whammy.