Of all the artists that emerged from the freak folk/New Weird America boom of the early noughties, Colorado-born Josephine Foster is one of the most enduring, and certainly one of the most interesting. Besides the obvious – her startling voice, opera trained but as wild as the hills – constant reinvention and inspired collaboration have been the hallmarks of her continued success. She has tackled folk, country, desert psych, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and 19th-century German Lieder, and has teamed up with David Pajo and Andy Bar (as The Children’s Hour) and Jason Ajemian (as Born Heller). In recent years, her most fruitful collaboration has been with guitarist Victor Herrero, with whom she formed the band Mendrugo.
Adormidera, while technically a solo album, is actually the latest flowering of her creative partnership with Herrero. Every song here is written by Herrero and chosen with Foster’s voice in mind, and on each, she is accompanied by his Spanish guitar. What is immediately apparent is that Foster’s voice is as evocative and as haunting in Spanish as it is in English or German.
Her singing on the album’s title track is instantly arresting: technically correct but constantly surprising. Foster’s music has always been a music of the outdoors, of dusty, sun-parched days that give way to chill evenings bright with stars. A communal music, made to be listened to by the light of a campfire. There is nothing artificial about the strange clarity of her vocals. Herrero’s guitar has a timeless quality that goes perfectly with Foster’s almost uncanny singing. His style, at once languid and precise, seems to be inherited directly from some of the greats of Spanish and Latin American classical guitar, but more important is the feel, the sense of pace and space that allows Foster to soar.
Closing track La Mancha sees Foster’s high and lonesome vocals trade places with Herrero’s minimal strums, plucks and bends, always on the verge of settling into a comforting melody, but always remaining on the haunting side of homely. The songs stretch and condense time, so you’re never quite sure how long they last: it comes as a surprise to learn that the fluttering, folky Añil clocks in at well over six minutes, but on multiple listens, you begin to map out its deceptive, complex journey. A translation of the lyrics reveals that the song is about a kind of paradox: a stone in constant movement, an object made perfect and precise by the random ravages of nature. This apparent contradiction sheds some light on the appeal of these songs: though evanescent in structure, they linger long in the memory.
The pastoral Avellaneda proceeds with a hushed reverence, seeking out the sublime in nature’s more muted corners. Comunión’s easy strumming belies a fervent, earthy energy, almost an eroticism, that becomes apparent in the lyrical references to buffalo horns and scorpion’s thorns. Hermana is both sweet and mysterious, Herrero’s quietly insistent, open-ended refrain acting as a springboard for Foster’s sustained notes and airy warbles, while Jilguero (‘goldfinch’) is as delicate and direct as a songbird’s flight.
Beguiling and stunning in equal measure, Adormidera is another complete success from one of the most original voices of the last twenty years. Its earthy mysticism is reflected in the outstanding cover artwork by Cala Fernández-Fígares: a heady mix of European surrealism and American naive art that perfectly captures the music’s untameable grace. Foster and Herrero have created, through a kind of alchemy, an artefact that seems to grow more beautiful with every listen.
Adormidera (May 1st, 2026) Eiderdown LP012 (US) / Nyahh 027 (Ireland)
Available to order on Bandcamp on May 1st via: Eiderdown | Nyahh