My Heart Is An Open Field

My Heart Is An Open Field is a confident, deeply beautiful debut album from Chicago four-piece Tenci. These songs are filled with nuance-- breaths of saxophone and flute, and touches of cello, piano, and pedal steel are hung on the sturdy folk songs of Jess Shoman, whose voice and range cuts through these dreams like a loved one’s voice. There is enough new rawness to separate the music of Tenci from other artists working in similar genres. Ultimately these songs feel magically formed, the hazy post-snakebite psychedelia of “Serpent,” the childlike wonder and xylophone on “Joy,” the heartbreaking imagery within “Forgot My Horse’s Name.” Even the recording of Shoman’s grandmother at the end of “Blue Spring” is something achingly refreshing.

RIYL: Cat Power, Haley Heynderickx, Molly Sarle, Joanna Sternberg, Lomelda