Review

June McDoom

With Strings

Temporary Residence • 2024

Vocalist June McDoom ascends gently into heaven with her new EP. She floats weightlessly, wrapping her voice in harp and strings. With each song, June McDoom soars higher and higher, eventually lingering somewhere far away from the hustle and bustle. »With Strings« is the title of this beautiful flight, during which the New York-based artist gives free rein to her musical sensibility and her talent for experimenting with sounds. Somehow everything around you blurs when you listen to the four tracks. There are hardly any choruses, hardly any verses, hardly any repetitions—instead, an unpredictable chronology is created, strung together like a story. It is precisely this motif of non-repetition that implies the image of an ascent, carried by building sounds. Inspired by the American singer Judee Sill, »With Strings« also features a cover version of the song »Emerald River Dance«, with which June McDoom pays tribute to her personal favourite song. »Black Is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair« also blossoms anew. Originally recorded by jazz and blues singer Nina Simone, June McDoom also gives this song a special place on her EP. Inspired by these women and their work, »With Strings« uses minimal sounds from the folk era of the sixties and seventies and can be interpreted as a musical homage to that time.