Polyvinyl Records
2008
Ida
Lovers Prayers
About This Album
Ida, the New York band that's built its sound on the sadness of love and clean harmonies, returned to Polyvinyl for Lovers Prayers, the group's eighth full-length, which offers every promise the others provided: pretty melodies, carefully conceived songs, and plenty of gentle, sweeping instrumentals that drone lightly under Dan Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell's careful vocals. Longtime collaborator Tara Jane O'Neil contributes her guitar and drums here, go-to cellist Jane Scarpantoni stays busy on tracks like "For Shame of Doing Wrong" (a Richard & Linda Thompson cover), and Warren Defever returns to produce the album, which was recorded at the Band's Levon Helm's studios (the drummer also plays on "First Light"), but this is all backdrop to the couple's voices -- with some help from Karla Schickele, who sounds a lot like Aimee Mann and complements the others nicely -- which lay softly but effectively over one another, guiding the songs in their earnestness. Littleton, interestingly, often takes the higher part (in the very Caetano Veloso-esque "The Love Below," for example), letting Mitchell's low whisper take the lead.
Track List (try tracks 1,3 and 11)

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