Mariee Siou is back with another timely and prescient collection of music, sharing her latest EP Circle of Signs. Alongside the new music she will also be going on tour this month with a stop at Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles on May 14. The EP serves as a follow-up to psych-folk singer/songwriter’s 2019 album Grief in Exile and continues her quest to immerse herself into this ageless tradition of healer-singers. Across the four songs on Circle of Signs she takes a wearied but necessary stare at the various catastrophic imbalances currently upending humanity.
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It’s a collection devoted to uncovering the horrific and heartbreaking but fueled by a desire for reconciliation and healing. One informed by Siou’s mixed Hungarian and Mestiza heritages, as well as a continued dedication to doing what she can to increase indigenous visibility and healing. In the spirit of that goal the artist recently underwent a slight name change: choosing to drop the silent “z” at the end of her last name in order to distance herself from the problematic French exonym “Sioux” and any assumptions that she might be part of the Lakota, Dakota, or Nakota peoples it refers to.
From the moment the EP begins you’re lulled into its spellbinding sonic world via opening song “Evil Crawls the Line.” Here a slow meander of strings and an entire windscape of instrumentation — horns and flutes — envelop the poetic lamentation and warning that radiates from Siou’s cries. While on title track “Circle of Signs” she coos an alluring ode to her home state of California and the devastating wild fires that scorch it. But it also unfolds as a greater and tender anthem for the reckoning that humanity appears to be accelerating towards with its immense disconnection (from each other and the planet) and consumption.
On “Snake Hoop,” she mingles mystic-folklore with a revelatory experience with ayahuasca. Across the dreamy ballad she weaves her newfound perceptions of life and death, one entwined with images of ouroboros. Then there’s the mournful “Végre Vissa” that ends the EP, a song inspired by the horror of the man-made fires that destroy huge swathes of the Amazon rainforest. But it also points to the inherently masculine trajectory of history and the violently damaged world we’ve borne out of it. As the song ebbs and flows alongside Siou’s lulls she offers some hope in a rejuvenated world that’s truly begun to value indigenous, feminine, and our nonhuman kin whom we share the planet with.
See Mariee Siou on tour at Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles on May 14.
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Mariee Siou tour
May 12 – Boulder Creek, CA – Lille Aaeske*
May 13 – Carpinteria, CA – Sweet Mountaintop Farm^
May 14 – Los Angeles, CA – Genghis Cohen*
May 17 – Bolinas, CA – Smiley’s Saloon w/ Jeff Manson
May 18 – Healdsburg, CA – Little Saint
May 19 – Berkeley, CA – Ashkenaz*
May 21 – Nevada City, CA – Miners Foundry^
May 24 – Olympia, WA – New Traditions Fair Trade^
May 25 – Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern^
May 26 – Portland, OR – The Old Church^
May 28 – Port Angeles, WA – Juan de Fuca Festival
+ Solo set
* w/ Angelica Rockne
^ w/ Kacey Johansing
Words: Steven Ward
Listen to Circle of Signs the new EP from Mariee Siou below!
