It's no surprise that Years, the latest Azita LP, has felt like it's slipped through the end-of-the-year cracks. Azita Youssefi has long seemed overlooked amidst the oddball tunesmiths of her Drag City home, quietly making idiosyncratic records that approximate the '70s singer-songwriter era in oddly-phrased, strangely-sung ways.
"It's way too short," Youssefi sings, as "It's Understanding" slips away amidst the final notes, ringing with decay. She may, indeed, be speaking of the composition; which ends on the south side of three minutes, with its feeling of elusiveness never quite resolved.
"Skies will be skies/don't let the water be the one/to tell you the way to shore," is how the jam begins, and this air of inscrutable poetry persists in a song that seems to suggest daily philosophies and common-sense even as it's not so easy to make sense of itself. Photo © Marzena Abrahamik
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