Calendar Year, the new album from Chicago-based psychedelic folk songwriter and musician Jessica Risker, evokes a timeless, dreamy vibe that sounds like it could have come from this year or maybe even 1972.
The songs are impeccable, but the arrangements have an indefinable quality that is both comforting and mysterious. Coming off a seven-year hiatus from her debut album (I See You Among the Stars, which followed her stint from 2011 to 2018 when she made albums under the moniker Deadbeat), Risker released the new album from songs she wrote in 2020. However, she hesitates to call it a “pandemic record”.
“I think of it more as a snapshot of a year in a life,” explains Risker, “With themes of human,…