June McDoom

***

Raised on a steady diet of ska, rock steady, reggae, dub; music was in the air of June McDoom’s upbringing on the edge of the Florida Everglades. The third generation musician keeps the tradition of Jamaican folk music alive- made slowly and by hand with her longtime partner Evan Wright.

Follow The Light lays the harmony of folk over the rhythm of dub, with Dionne Warwick, Minnie Riperton, Pentangle and the washed guitars of Cocteau Twins haunting its outer edges. Voice and guitar seeking each other out first, then everything else stacked across long days in the studio they keep at home, restraint kept on purpose. The lead single “Without You” is the whole method surfacing, split open and sparkling like a geode in a creek bed. Angelic heroics, and nothing less.