Where there’s a will

IRAN SO FAR AWAY In 1979, when she was 7, Azita’s family fled Tehran for Maryland during the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution.

Photo: Marzena Abrahamik

It’s just past 8pm on a typically frigid evening in late January. Azita Youssefi climbs onto the stage behind the bar at Wicker Park’s Rainbo Club—her watering hole—and settles into a seat at her oversized electric grand piano. She nervously scans the growing crowd of familiar faces and confesses that she neglected to prepare a set list. Allowing herself a swig of Amstel Light, she eases into a solo set of music assembled from her four albums for local indie imprint Drag City.

It isn’t long before the modest joint is filled to capacity. Youssefi, now at ease addressing the fully attentive audience, dedicates the final song of her set to Telefon Tel Aviv’s Charlie Cooper, whose missing body had been found on the Northwest Side two days before. Following the performance, before the bar even closes, Youssefi posts a status update to her Facebook page: “Azita wants to thank everyone who came out tonight. You are why I live here.”

The 38-year-old Iranian-American moved here from the D.C. area in 1989 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Youssefi played bass in fringe punk outfits the Scissor Girls and Bride of No No throughout the ’90s before doing an about-face and embarking upon a considerably more traditional solo career based around her piano arrangements, beginning with her 2003 Drag City debut, Enantiodromia.

On Tuesday 17, she introduces How Will You?, a graceful collection of vintage pop that’s deliberately far removed from the frenetic pace of her last proper LP, 2004’s exceptional Life on the Fly, “I wanted [Fly] to sound like the equivalent of audio cocaine, very crisp and on edge, very extroverted.”

In contrast, in her latest Youssefi stretches out over increasingly gentle and dynamic arrangements, like the haunting ballad “You Really Knew How to Turn It On (But It’s Off Now),” and marks her return to the bass, in addition to playing piano and guitar. “There’s a lot of archetypal forces coming and wrestling with each other in this one,” the Albany Park resident says.

Though the sound-engineer-by-day had been writing since spring ’04, completion of the record was sidelined by a number of projects, including a stint touring with Will Oldham and composing arrangements for Brian Torrey Scott’s play Detail from the Mountain Side, released as an 11-minute EP in 2006.

Burrowing herself in Humboldt Park’s JoyRide Studio, Youssefi laid down basic tracks on a grand piano, accompanied by her longtime collaborator on bass, Matt Lux (Iron and Wine), and drummer John Herndon (Tortoise). Youssefi then supplemented the rhythm tracks at her home studio, laid down vocals and overdubs, and brought in guests like guitarist Emmett Kelly and pedal-steel ace Sam Wagster. It all contributes to the warmer, sepia-tinged tone of the new album: “This one I wanted to be more dreamy, a wash, where the listener imagines some kind of ghost.”

With this latest disc, Youssefi’s reinvented herself once again. Gone are the exaggerated vowels and slick, off-kilter piano pop that earned more than a few comparisons to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s beloved yacht-rock institution: “When it’s like ‘this record sounds like Steely Dan, this one sounds like whatever,’ that’s for people who write about music to look at it that way. I don’t think that way, and I don’t think that it’s necessary for anybody to think that way.” Though the analogy is tiring, she’s a good sport nonetheless, “I feel like in a couple records no one will say it anymore. I think it takes about three to four records. People are really slow; I’m still getting ‘how did you get here from the Scissor Girls?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, how did you get here from the high-school cafeteria?’ I dunno, you just do.”

Azita plays a free record-release show at the Empty Bottle on March 2. She stopped by our offices for a live performance, too. Hear it on the Infinite Loop podcast at timeoutchicago.com/blog.

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