Scott Kodi

If you look through Iceland spar, a clear crystal that refracts light, you’ll see a double image. Brooklyn singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Scott Kodi first heard of the mineral around the time he ended a long-term relationship, quit a job at a respected publisher, and moved into a loft with strangers. Reading Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, he was struck by descriptions of characters peering through Iceland spar to glimpse unfurling alternate realities. Slowly, songs bearing similar themes of divergence and transformation took shape.

After a summer of obsessive writing, Scott brought twenty demos to producer Christopher Daly at Salvation Recording Co. in New Paltz, NY. The resulting five-song series of singles, Iceland Spar, explores doublings, distorted reflections, and alternate existences. “Third of July” conjures a relationship’s early magic; “Other Lives” tastes the breakup's bittersweet possibilities. Elsewhere, Scott travels other roads taken and imagined, from isolating himself in the pursuit of music to regretting not petting one rather intimidating dog (it was huge!).

The songs of Iceland Spar sift and splice genre at will. Scrappy indie rock mingles with yearning pop. Delicate fingerpicking brushes against mechanized synthscapes. The common thread is Scott’s voice—alternately fluid and measured, powerful and fragile, singing about the way things are and the ways they could be.