There’s something fundamentally elusive about Erin Durant. A New Orleans native who found her artistic identity in the Brooklyn indie folk and rock scene in the 2010s, Durant now lives in Topanga Canyon. That sense of movement, wandering and wondering, is at the core of her music as well.
On Islands, her bewitching eight-song set from 2019, her songs felt like they wanted to hide behind the wallpaper, to never quite embrace a particular destiny. Possessing a woodland sprite soprano and an obvious love of saloon piano and honky-tonk songwriting craft, Durant as often as not seemed to be working in opposition to the composite elements of her work. She tends to shy away from choruses or repeated hooks, instead letting her songs unfurl slowly…