La Vita Nuova

Maria McKee is an artist who confidently, fearlessly follows her muse wherever it takes her, which is the biggest reason she has a profoundly loyal cult following instead of a larger profile in the mainstream of popular music. McKee also follows her heart, which informs her 2020 album, La Vita Nuova, on several levels. McKee was semi-retired from music at the age of 53 when she came out as queer in a series of social media posts; in one of them, she bluntly declared, I suppose technically I’m BI/Queer/Pan but really just enjoying my Dykedom right now. Around the same time, McKee rediscovered her passion for the romantic poets, particularly Dante Alighieri, and under their spell she found herself writing a new cycle of songs. Named for Dantes poetic story of the lost love of his youth, McKees La Vita Nuova on the one hand confronts her new path in life; some of the songs find her calling out to sexually ambiguous figures, while others are quite specifically women, as she acknowledges a kind of attraction she hasnt publicly explored in depth. More significant, though, is the influence of Dante. Popular music is packed with songs about love and sex, but La Vita Nuova is instead an album about longing, the bittersweet agony of a love that has not or will not be requited, and it takes McKees art in a number of new directions. Here, her vocal style is artful and carefully controlled in a way it hasnt been before, with the sustained quaver of light opera blending with a sense of wonder that suggests an Americanized Kate Bush. Her voice adapts beautifully to this creative direction, and her instrument has rarely sounded stronger or more intelligently used (and remember this is a singer who was knocking out Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt as a teenager). The arrangements are similarly elegant, ornate but never overdone, often draping the songs in string arrangements or stately piano that mirrors and reinforces the sense of drama in this music. Phil Spector once said his singles were little symphonies, but La Vita Nuova plays more like an opera, unafraid to deal with human emotions at their strongest, avoiding histrionics but embracing an uncommon passion and intensity. Listeners who keep hoping McKee will return to the sound of her early work with Lone Justice or the Americana of 1993s You Gotta Sin to Get Saved will probably be thoroughly puzzled by La Vita Nuova, which reveals zero country influence. But those who have followed the more personal journey of her work of the 2000s will find this a rich, compelling experience, clearly the work of a rare talent reaching for something different and succeeding. It takes courage to make an album like La Vita Nuova, and it takes a rare talent to make it work, and this leaves no doubt Maria McKee has plenty of both. ~ Mark Deming