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Songs We Love: Itasca, 'Buddy'

Itasca.
Ella Andersson
/
Courtesy of the artist
Itasca.

There's a muffled snare beat, like a throat-clearing cough at the start of a speech, and then a gentle cascade of guitar arpeggios before Kayla Cohen starts to sing. The bucolic vibe is the ideal complement to her warm, aqueous tones, as she begins to spin a tale as pastoral as the production on "Buddy."

Cohen has recorded on her own in the past, and on Open To Chance, the Los Angeles singer/songwriter/guitarist's first album for the Paradise of Bachelors label, she's in the company of an empathetic folk-rock ensemble — but she's always Itasca. Whether alone or accompanied, Cohen brings an airy but mysterious late-'60s/early-'70s psych-folk feel to the fore, and this fanciful account of alfresco domesticity certainly feels like a slice of vintage Laurel Canyon balladry.

Itasca, <em>Open To Chance.</em>
/ Courtesy of the artist
/
Courtesy of the artist
Itasca, Open To Chance.

Cohen's low, husky voice delicately unfurls a series of blissful nature images — doves in the air, moonlight on a mountaintop and picking berries "with the herd," which makes you imagine her being followed around by a friendly gang of goats. But hungry ungulates aren't Cohen's only company on that mountain; the object of her affection is a crucial part of the picture, too.

The lover with whom Cohen shares her idealized hippie dream — one that seems just as enticing today as it might have in the Age of Aquarius — is with her every step of the way. The very first words of the song are "We were together." That aforementioned moonlight? The two of them go dancing in it. And amid gracefully swooping steel-guitar lines, the choruses deliver what seems like the narrator's primary agenda: "to live on the mountain by your side."

For most of the song, it seems like there's little to stand in the way of this starry-eyed romance. Towards the end, Cohen hints at a potential spiritual conflict in her "dues to the saints," but even this only comes up in the context of eschewing all other allegiances in favor of pursuing love up where the air is thin. Soon it's practically a scene from The Wind In The Willows, as Cohen ponders enlisting the local mice as guides through the wilderness. "They're dancing as we're going down the aisle," she sings. And since there's generally a distinct lack of aisles on a mountainside, we can only assume the couple is headed to be wedded, with all their furry friends in attendance.

Of course, the song is called "Buddy," so maybe Cohen would be satisfied with a more platonic type of relationship as long as it could be played out on that same idyllic landscape. Either way, the mellow glow the tune generates is reason enough to want to bask in its evanescent light for as long as life's harsher aspects can conceivably be held at bay.

Open To Chance comes out Sept. 30 on Paradise of Bachelors.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jim Allen