Ida: Will You Find Me

Ida has long made lovely, resonant music despite (or perhaps because of) its adherence to a fairly modest palette: The band's slow, quiet, deliberately paced pop has never needed many accoutrements to get across. But the New York band's fourth album Will You Find Me, released after an ill-conceived and basically unconsummated flirtation with a fickle major label, exponentially broadens Ida's sound, experimenting with diverse approaches to slow, low-key, sad-eyed pop. It's amazing how well it works: "Shrug" traffics in chilly, beat-driven ambience, but the song retains Ida's warm sincerity, never lapsing into detached artifice or posturing. "Man In Mind" revolves around little more than Karla Schickele's muscular vocal and a stirring piano hook. So it goes throughout Will You Find Me, which manages to be consistently and subtly appealing yet sprawling and unpredictable enough to accommodate three different lead vocalists (working together and separately), a wide variety of arrangements and instruments (strings, organs, wine glasses, and much more), and guests ranging from His Name Is Alive's Warn Defever to Bernie Worrell to Rodan's Tara Jane O'Neil. The result is a remarkably assured collection that's never burdened by its plentiful ingredients, instead revealing different highlights each time you listen.