Allegra Krieger keeps throwing you for a loop, and every time you think you have her figured out, you haven’t a clue, which is what makes I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane such a fascinating experience. You think you’re playing checkers and she’s play chess. From gentle choices both instrumentally and vocally she throws in a joke and then punches you in the gut. Remarkably you thank her for it.
The opening horn arrangement by Sammy Weissberg, featuring Priscilla Reinhart and Nancy Ranger on ‘A Place for It To Land’ simply astounds. In some ways it’s almost like going to church. As the guitar comes up the horns fade out as Krieger sings, “I do not know what pulls me/ Or which way I’m pulled,” illustrating the nature of the fragile plane of existence, where moments in time flicker and fade and one is pulled in two directions at once.
Krieger who has worked at an array of jobs, recounts days as a waitress on ‘Nothing in this World Ever Stays Still’. Amidst the acoustic guitar and bass, she recounts the brilliant mundanity of the moment, “Three missed calls from my Malibu pimp/ I was writing down an order for Boom Boom Shrimp.” The moments though are not as mundane as they seem, “I watched my hopefulness seep out your skin/ Just as I learned to start loving again.” The ying and yang of those moments makes you realise just how fragile the plane truly is.
Sometimes she takes you totally by surprise. ‘I Wanted To Be’ shifts on a simply strummed guitar riff as she recounts, “I never forgot that as something grows/ Something else must rot.”
Setting in completely as the song ends, electric guitars bring that rot right into full frame, making you realise everything is not always pretty and bright.
Bringing the album to a close, ‘Lingering’ is a full band track, slow and stately, but deep at the heart of a track where she appears to be strong and stoic, Krieger lets down her guard, “And I want to slip into that Fragile Plane/ Where I exist without a body or name/ And you meet me there/ For a moment/ Before we return to my room.” Touching and being touched, is all there is, that’s enough.
Masterfully Allegra Krieger takes I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane and shows us a world within a world. A place where, if only for a moment, there is peace. Go there often for there is much to learn.