Lady Dan

There’s a paradoxically perfect union between a broken heart and cowboy twang. Tyler Dozier’s songs as Lady Dan tap even deeper into that sublime intersection where searing pain can reach sublime heights. Her own tale of hurt comes complete with multilayered existential quandaries, of empowerment and restriction, of life and death, of faith and its absence. On her debut album I Am the Prophet April 23rd 2021 via Earth Libraries, the Austin-based musician weaves intensely personal storytelling, poetic imagery, biblical allusion, immaculate arrangements, and crackling songwriting into an irresistible melancholic melange.

“I grew up listening to country, psych rock, bluegrass, punk, and old socialist folk,” Dozier explains. But as she moved to the big city of Birmingham with her then-boyfriend to attend Christian ministry school, she felt that world closing in rather than expanding. Between a controlling relationship, her father’s battle with cancer, and a wavering certainty in her faith, Dozier’s world was changing. She embraced the rebellion at her core, left school, returned home to care for her father as he passed, eventually moved to Texas for a new start, and began working her way toward I Am the Prophet.

“I learned how to show my strength, my truth, my self through music,” Dozier says.

In early 2020, Dozier returned to her hometown and holed up in a one-room cabin to sketch out what would become I Am the Prophet. A few months later, she convened a group of musicians at the home studio of Nashville musician Jeremy Clark to bring those songs to life.

Building up from a base of burnished acoustic guitar and twinkling keys, album highlight “No Home” tells that growth story in a stunning arc. Dozier’s lyrics somehow feel both intimate and epic, tracing from her lowest lows to a new height. “Nothing to write home about/ There’s no home to write to at all,” she sings, before insisting that she will never let wolves or men be her master again, as violin, cello, and pedal steel bolster her winged ascent. Album closer “Left-Handed Lover” brings everything into focus over a shuffling rhythm and a hazy cloud of flute-like synths. The dense and purring arrangement echoes the indie mythmaking of Weyes Blood or Julia Holter, technicolor and organic, though Dozier’s vocals bear down straight to the heart.

I Am the Prophet proudly displays Lady Dan as a project of empowerment and depth, but leaves plenty of room for growth. Much like her own experience with religion, Dozier’s debut is not a statement of certainty or superiority, but rather a newfound welcoming and questing.