There is no shortage of records inspired by a move to the country, but few that feel so attuned to the creative possibilities of their new environment as the second album by songwriter Emily Cross. No bucolic cliches here. In 2014, Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski (who produces) relocated from Chicago to rural Texas, and the landscape she evokes, emotional as well as physical, is a place of strange and elemental forces. Menace and rapture are beautifully balanced in Cross’s minimalist alt rock. Her high, breathy voice conveys both on the wonderfully titled Something Unseen Touches a Flower to My Forehead, while The Depths has percussive electronics roiling and fading like a storm seen from afar.
