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in a liminal time for writing songs

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Heart of Darkness by Sparklehorse cover :)

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Reuse the Cels cover based on the straight palm slide & the reality store version :)

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One Day I'll Wake Up Blind

"The sound I’m trying to get across, I’m not just up there recreating old blues tunes or trying to invent some surrealistic rhapsody … I’m not doing it to see how good I can sound, or how perfect the melody can be, or how intricate the details can be woven or how perfectly written something can be. I don’t care about those things. I always hear other instruments, how they should sound. The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It’s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold with whatever that conjures up. That’s my particular sound. I haven’t been able to succeed in getting it all the time. Mostly I’ve been driving at a combination of guitar, harmonica and organ, but now I find myself going into territory that has more percussion in it and rhythms of the soul." – Bob Dylan

Welcome, friends, to the last Isabella James album before I take leave on a hiatus, ‘One Day I Will Wake Up Blind’.

For those of you who care enough about this record to be reading this I want to start by saying that I love you, and I’m so thankful for you. The last 5 years I’ve spent releasing and recording music have been some of the most exciting, rewarding and joyful years of my life. All the support you’ve given me has filled me with so much pride every day since the release of my debut, ‘Climbing Mt Zion’. So much has changed since then. About me, about the world, and about the music I make. I like to think in this retirement I leave behind a document to the traumas I’ve overcome and strength I’ve built in myself, a breadcrumb trail that ties the frightened girl I was to the confident woman I now am. That song can’t be unwritten, and that connection can’t be broken because of you.

I like to think I’ve left behind a trove of appreciation for all my fans; I hope that you all have found these works as transformative as I have and I hope to an even greater extent that peace and happiness comes to all of your lives. The kindness I have been shown over the years could make me well up and it deserves to be ten times reciprocated.

I couldn’t, in good faith, leave these years behind without also leaving behind a final statement. A last declaration of my voice as a songwriter, the progress I’ve made as a producer, and everything that I’ve always wanted to say in my music. I think in a way, this chase for finality has led this to be my most personal record. This is an ‘Undoing of Isabella James’, a deep dive into my own head. I think it serves eloquently as a companion piece to my 2021 self-titled record. Exponentially less tortured, however. The Dancers Reward and the songs came from a place of getting to know myself, my relationship with God, and my place in the world. Now in the sunset of my discography I wish for you to get to know me too.

I believe in Frank Zappa’s ideas concerning what he called, ‘Conceptual Continuity’. That every work an artist makes informs every other work they make. I’ve tried here to tie up any loose ends in my own discography. On a purely musical level, my penchant for genre crossing has hopefully been restrained enough to be something cohesive here. I’ve tried to trim any fat, these songs are the finest selection from the number I wrote for this project and I’ve taken no shortcuts with them. These arrangements have been played live, recorded in the studio with as little, ‘in the box’, sounds as possible. This is, sonically, the album I’ve wanted to make from the beginning. Lush, warm, folksy, ambitious, full of personality but quirky too. Anyone who knows me will tell you how idiosyncratic and neurotic I am as a person. In spite of that, I love myself! I pray that my personality shines through in these recordings.

So what’s next for me? Music is my life and it’s impossible to say I’ll leave it behind with any sense of earnestness; I’ve been moving into the professional space recently. The roles that are expected of me now leave little room for my own creative endeavors but the world I’ve found myself in and the collaborations I’ve been fostering fill me with so much excitement. I’m truly doing what I love and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So keep your eyes peeled! You might see my name on some releases here and there. Keep me in your heart as you do so and I’ll hold these years in mine concurrently.

Peace and Love, Thank you for everything, Isabella James

“Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I shall go.” (Ruth, 1:16) 

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butane lovesong (video test)

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3/16/24 from a show we played @ purchase w carwreckvigil n blouse

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Short song i wrote about an engineering student i hate

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Gold Star for Robot Boy cover!

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Defiance, Ohio cover!!!

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'Edgar Atkins' think i'm going to scrap this one, it's part of a larger song (Endless Strata/Edgar Atkins) but endless strata kinda sucks so idk

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quick song i might put on an ep i made in the fall

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cover of the hard part, a few months old i think but i felt like uploading something

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in the aeroplane over the sea blinkies

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going on my Pikmin walk :3

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straight line speeding demo

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poem, cut up method

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EVERYONE LISTEN TO DOG BEDS’ MUSIC !!!!!

I haven’t used Tumblr much before but Twitter is completely unusable rn so here we are, hello