Ida: The Braille Night

Culled from the same studio sessions as Will You Find Me (which, in selling over 12,000 copies, attracted "Best of 2000" mentions from Spin and The New York Times), Ida's The Braille Night is another outstanding, sweetly fragile album from the NY band. Five albums into their career, Ida has earned the right to stop being compared to other bands (i.e. Low) and instead be used as a measuring stick by which other bands aspire.

The Braille Night is stripped down in comparison to its predecessor. The textured instrumentation that graced Will You Find Me is replaced by a hushed minimalism. While, for my money, the best single tracks between the two are found on the earlier album ("Maybelle," for instance, still gives me chills), there is more of a through line on The Braille Night, a consistent mood that begins with the patient opening chords of "Let's Go Walking" and carries through to the end. This is probably correlated to the songwriting duties, which are mostly assumed by Daniel Littleton in these selections (four songs on Will You Find Me were written by either Karla Schickele or Elizabeth Mitchell, whereas Schickele's "Arrowheads" is the only song on The Braille Night not at least co-written by Littleton). All three songwriters are also quite lovely vocalists, giving Ida a versatility that not many bands can rival. With that said, though, they blend together seamlessly. Ida as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The album reaches its apex at its center. "So Worn Out" is, despite its title, one of the sweetest songs around. "I get so upset," Littleton sings, "Just hold me / Don't let me forget what's important." "So Long" is another gentle beauty. The track between these two, "Blizzard of '78," is the most up-tempo song on the album and announces its urgency with sharp percussion and driving guitars. Every one of its seven minutes feels necessary, and it somehow doesn't feel disruptive despite its departure from its surroundings.

Lest the listener be confused, Ida is not, in fact, named after their violinist (Ida Pearle). It is a happy coincidence (Littleton and Mitchell found their inspiration for the name from an artist, also named Ida). Littleton is a songwriter with an exceptional eye for nuance, and Mitchell and Schickele shine both vocally and instrumentally. The fact that both The Braille Night and Will You Find Me are drawn from the same recording sessions is just scary. What's to come, what's to come...

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