Darci Phenix released her second album, Wishbone, in 2021 through long-running New York-based indie label, Team Love Records. “It was such an intense process. I was printing off Neil Young lyrics and reading them and trying to make ‘a great song,’ you know? I was really trying with that record,” Phenix reflects.
So when it came time to make a follow-up, Phenix committed to adjusting her goals and her approach. “I just wanted it to feel good,” she said. “Sustainability is at the core of this record in so many ways—sustainability with my art practice and making sure it will work for me long-term, and also just finding a version of love that’s sustainable instead of magical and intense and chaotic, and then it fizzles.”
The result is Sable, Phenix’s third full-length, which she celebrated with an album release party during a First Thursday event on March 6 at Laura Vincent Design & Gallery in Portland. The event was also a shared opening reception for Phenix’s new, large-scale textile piece, Second Nature, along with painter MaryAnn Puls’ A Collection—showing in the gallery until March 29.
Second Nature—and Phenix’s textile work in general—plays an integral role in her pursuit of a sustainable art practice and an enjoyable music-making experience. “Each is a completely different thing. One is totally working with my hands and the other is working with my feelings and sound. One dissolves as it’s being made and the other materializes,” she said, “they’re both grounding in different ways: the textiles are very grounding in reality and the present moment, and the music is grounded in a more spiritual space—in my dream spirit being.”
Everything feeds the creation of her music. So while the music is the thing for Phenix, the physical work is vital to keeping her whole artistic ecosystem in balance. “I take my crochet to the bar all the time now. I make little mossy hanging things and I’m always just working on them at the bar,” she said. “Using my hands gets me out of my head, and that has helped me so much. There’s a humility to the textile work that really balances out the ego of being a musician.”
Phenix grew up in an environment that valued creativity, with a mother who played in a band and who would host artists’ nights at their home. She was in her mid-teens when songs started emerging out of her and haven’t stopped since. Along the way, Phenix has figured out how to best unfurl and present them to the world in a way that works for her, “I’ve really grappled with developing an authentic identity and just feeling comfortable with myself,” she said. “It’s that old tug of war between what people think of you and who you really are.”
You can hear that existential harmony on Sable, a collection of eight diaphanous dream-folk songs heavily influenced by the natural world, particularly the varied landscapes found across the Pacific Northwest. Sun-dappled, self-reflective and streaked with memories and melancholy, recalling the gentle, inviting, and introspective folk of artists like Kate Wolf, Adrianne Lenker and Florist.