Ida

A quarter-century after Liz Mitchell and Daniel Littleton started Ida amid the noise of New York in the early ’90s, the listening world finally seems ready to embrace their lush quietude, the gorgeous restraint of a band that epitomized the songwriting strength of slowcore. In those salad days, Mitchell and Littleton made cassettes in their apartment and passed them to friends who, in turn, passed them to people who ran labels. They eventually signed to Simple Machines, the influential underground institution. In that mid-’90s moment of major labels craving the next big thing, Capitol Records drafted Ida, fronting the costs for a record that involved 14 studios, contributions from Warn Defever and Bernie Worrell, and gorgeous and vulnerable songs about looking for reassurance in relationships, about knowing you can trust someone with the future of your heart.

Capitol, though, opted not to release what eventually became Will You Find Me, Ida’s open-hearted 2000 masterpiece. Though widely praised, its sales stayed low. Mitchell and Littleton left New York City for the Hudson Valley, becoming parents, participating in the historic scene there, making children’s records, and writing several more exquisite Ida records for the cult they’d built around their tender beauty, including one with eternal prankster Michael Hurley. Ida slowly faded out, like the incandescent harmonies between Mitchell and Littleton at some track’s end. But a reunion for Numero Group’s birthday in 2023 presaged a generous 2025 reissue of Will You Find Me, a tour alongside Tsunami, and a series of hushed living-room tours. It seems appropriate that Ida’s slow and aching songs—the phosphorescent “Past the Past,” the soft and steely “Maybelle,” the spry “The Love Below”—took their time to find the crowd; they always seemed built for the long game, anyway.