Album of the Week | Allegra Krieger: I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane
On her latest, the New York singer/songwriter guides us through the spaces in between where we've been and where we'll go next
New York singer/songwriter Allegra Krieger has quietly been releasing volumes of tender, searing folk for years. 2022’s Precious Thing was met with a gentle crest of recognition and, now, she’s making her Double Double Whammy debut with I Keep My Feet On The Fragile Plane. The 10-track, Luke Temple-produced record bowls over an unsuspecting listener with razor sharp reflections on city drudgery and the redeeming sparks of the sublime as they interact with the mundane.
Krieger’s songwriting picks you up and turns you around–upon a first full listen, I found myself feeling wistful and a little dizzy. I’d walked in large, uneven circles around my neighborhood at dusk, transported by her deft and–at times–oblique lyricism and the inventive, subtly psychedelic production that lifts her voice into a tender, liminal space. As the sun set and she sang of “an old light lingering around everything,” I immediately started searching for words to describe it. Still dazed, I sent a text to a friend saying that “Allegra Krieger’s new record is like taking a walk through a neighborhood you used to live in while on mushrooms.”
What I was looking for was a way to describe the ways that Krieger creates music that settles right in between the past and the future–while also fully recognizing the ephemeral nature of both. We all know what it’s like to be in the present, but where she lands on this record is a place just above the moment we’re in right now. In reference to the title, she identifies this space as “the fragile plane,” calling it “a middle ground in the universe” where the kaleidoscope of her (and our) experiences settle on a single, colorful frame. I Keep My Feet On The Fragile Plain is both a breath-wracking, teary-eyed sigh and a celebration; a masterclass on gently pulling two opposing truths into one grand transformation.
I Keep My Feet On The Fragile Plane opens with a smattering of tracks threaded with a surprising array of sounds and textures. Throughout the record, instruments like the French horn, pedal steel and electric guitar walk in and out of the arrangements with a lopsided grace. Krieger doesn’t waste any time before coming in with a gut punch on the title track, which is a gentle strummer undercut by a static drone and a small coterie of wind instruments. The first moment of levity that lends itself enough to passive listening comes on “Nothing In This World Ever Stays Still,” a breezy, folksy nod to her stint in California with Joni Mitchell-conjuring delivery. “When you feel like heaven you’re closer to death” sings Krieger, as she recounts taking orders for shrimp and the revolving door of misfortune and joy as wildfires burn and beauty slips in.
It’s true that Allegra Krieger fully deserves the draw of a parallel to Joni. As the world of confessional folk has become more and more saturated, her voice and musicality stand out–due largely to the precision with which she follows her intuition down intriguing, melodic paths while retaining balance between dreamlike and clear-eyed sentiments in her lyricism. In a press release, Krieger was noted as an inheritor of “Joni Mitchell’s sharp noticing,” with the caveat that “the dream-like association, harmonic dissonance and angular melodic ascensions in each song are singularly and delightfully Krieger’s.”