Victoria a Life

"I wanted you to get the humidity of it, the heat, the ways we reach to the pits of hell and the heights of heaven," South Carolina native Adia Victoria has said of her third album. "I wanted this record to encapsulate the extremes of the South." Mission accomplished; listening to A Southern Gothic, there is no escaping that uneasy—truly, haunted—feeling of so much beauty and so much menace all in one place. The singer-songwriter gets right to it with "Magnolia Blues": "I'm going back South/ Down to Carolina/ I'm gonna plant myself/ Under a magnolia/ I'm gonna let that dirt/ Do its work." The magnolia tree is both a symbol of deep-South femininity and strength as well as horror, given its association with lynchings.