Lily Taylor Pours Experimental, Evocative Pop Into New Album Amphora

Lily Taylor last released an album in September 2014. Titled The Ride, the Sean French-produced collection was her studio debut and was met with near-universal acclaim. (Writing for the Observer, Wanz Dover hailed “the haunting and dramatic mood [and] ... striking originality of her album.”)

The Boston native and Dallas-based singer-songwriter is preparing to release a follow-up, Amphora, on July 21.

Lest you think, however, that nine-year gap between records was fueled by some kind of sophomore slump, all you need to do is swing by the multi-hyphenate talent’s website. There, you’ll find a tab titled “Timeline,” which is — by Taylor’s own admission — an incomplete accounting of nearly every project she’s undertaken in the months and years since The Ride’s release.

For example, in 2016, she took over as booking agent for the dearly departed Crown and Harp on Lower Greenville, a position she held for almost a year and a half until the bar closed in May 2017.

“We did 700 shows in one year, while the sidewalk was torn up,” Taylor says during a recent conversation. “The city didn’t want that club there, so they were trying to actively keep it hard to operate.”

In 2017, she also began her KUZU radio show, “BandwidthTX,” that same year in Denton. The hour-long program still airs every second and fourth Tuesday and is built around “an exploration of music from around the world.”

She began working with local institution Top Ten Records, which, in 2019, thanks to a grant from the city of Dallas, begat the Sounds of Oak Cliff concert series, also ongoing (albeit without Taylor’s involvement). In 2021, Taylor began performing in the self-described “audio-visual drone project” Locations with her husband, Sean Miller, an instructor at Dallas College.

Along with all of this, she was teaching and writing and absorbing influences and traveling and performing. In other words, Taylor was not sitting idly by, waiting for inspiration to strike.

If anything, she was searching — understanding what interested her, but struggling, within Dallas, to find the best place to express herself most fully.

“In the local scenes here, there are a lot of venues, but I’ve had trouble finding where my music fits,” Taylor says. “Like, I can’t fill Three Links on a Saturday night with my music. It’s too ambient; it’s a little arty. I get weird. I’m interested in more experimental things. ... I go out because I’m curious. I want to be stimulated in some way. I want to meet someone new; I want to see or hear something new. But that’s the kind of person I am.”

Such sentiments might make the 10-track Amphora seem more imposing than it is. While nothing on the record — which Taylor co-produced with Black Taffy and Alex Bhore, at the latter’s Elmwood Recording in Dallas — would be mistaken for heavy rotation pop fluff, the gorgeous, melting ambiance of songs like the ominously droning “J&Js,” the glittering “Slow” or the languorous “Kepler Wells” is profoundly captivating.

“I’ve taught this concept for a while now, in different ways and workshops I’ve done for voice lessons ... encouraging artists to express their inner voice,” Taylor says. “That needs to be guiding decision-making, rather than creating something for commercial marketability. Both are valid, but understanding that if we are artists, then we have a responsibility to ourselves to explore perspectives. It’s got to be less thinking about trying to cater to somebody, and more about expression.”

Anchored by Taylor’s ethereal soprano and shot through with a glitchy glamour, Amphora, befitting the origins of its title (a tall Greek or Roman jar with two handles and a long neck), fairly overflows with beauty. It’s a luminous, thoughtful piece of work that doesn’t feel, or sound, like much else emanating from North Texas these days.

“You think about all of these ancient cultures — pre-Roman times — that were using this kind of technology, and I’m thinking, ‘We still use this today, this is so interesting that this form of technology is still being used today,’” Taylor says. “I was inspired by it in terms of, well, we’re transporting something that’s important, right? It’s in this delicate vessel. ... Then I started thinking, ‘Well, if you are a vessel, and how I’m writing these specific songs is like an improvised channeling,’ that makes me the vessel. I got excited [the idea of an amphora] was addressing the material.”

Beyond the concept of carrying and/or being a vessel, Taylor found herself threading the theme of duality through many of the songs on the avant-pop Amphora, taking care to walk a line between lyrics as grounded in the specific as they were the universal.

“I do try to keep certain imagery wide, so different people can put different meanings on it,” Taylor says. “I also enjoy using words that could have double meanings. The theme of duality came up a lot in the songs that ended up on this album.”

Given Taylor’s intimate understanding of North Texas venues and her desire for the music she’s making to be given its full consideration, she does not yet have any local dates lined up in support of Amphora.

Instead, she’ll head west, to the Outsound New Music Summit on July 29 at the Berkeley Finnish Hall, to perform for what the event calls “the increasing number of people seeking a real ‘alternative’ to the status quo of music being presented” in the Bay Area and beyond.

“I will be performing an improvisation set,” Taylor says. “I use a cymbal that I sing through, with a surface transducer.”

However a listener comes to Amphora, Taylor’s hope is that those who immerse themselves in the ambient, experimental songs she’s channeled are struck by a sort of déjà vu. It’s almost ironic: A feeling of familiarity meant to lower a listener’s defenses enough to be knocked out by the experimental pop she’s composed and performs on the record.

“My fantasy is that people get this album and it’s like it’s always been in their collection,” Taylor says “Something that feels new, but it’s also timeless. I feel confident in saying that because it took me so long to get this album to where it is right now, to release.”