For several millennia, the harp has been characterized by a somewhat celestial ethos, an instrument ordained for the angelic and mythological. Seldom does it embody such an eerie or despondent tone as it does with Sun Riah, the moniker of Oklahoma City songwriter M. Bailey Stephenson. On her 2013 release, …, the Musical, Stephenson used the ancient stringed instrument as a vessel for sadness and solitude, but never at the expense of its uniquely cherubic tones. By and large, it was a modestly gorgeous and sincere debut, one that firmly entrenched Sun Riah as one of OKC’s most promising young purveyors of unearthly experimental music.
“All Fell” — our first glimpse of Stephenson’s forthcoming full-length, Firefly Night Light — is almost metal by comparison. Steeped as much in the temporal drones of Earth or Sunn O))) as the Akron/Family branch of the freak folk movement, the song is an assured leap into a darker, more harrowing domain. Arrangements are more complex; atmospherics are more jarring; and Stephenson’s voice sounds more yearningly resolute than it ever has. More tellingly, her words stand in stark contrast to the fractured melancholy of her debut: “I am much stronger now,” she sings. “And now I stand much taller / Than I did with you.” Up to this point, the allure of Sun Riah’s music manifested in her own vulnerability. But this new incarnation sounds more determined, more willing to conquer apprehensions and pummel them with the spectral beauty of the gloaming — and the unlikeliest of instruments.
Firefly Night Light drops June 12, with an album release show scheduled that evening at Norman’s Guestroom Records. Listen to “All Fell” below.
