“Moon in the Mirror,” the first album by folk Americana singer-songwriter Irena Eide, has a melodic and dreamy sound, but its songs are borne from a tumultuous time in the artist’s past—and the inspirations of a decade living in West Marin. Under the name Rainy Eyes, Ms. Eide released the eight-track album on Aug. 2.
“I came out of a really difficult, heartbreaking situation and was writing a prolific amount of songs, just as a form of therapy,” she said of that time. “I had to let go of so much.”
Ms. Eide wrote the bulk of “Moon in the Mirror” while living in a trailer in Inverness, alone with her guitar and then-1-year-old son, without knowing she was working on her first solo project. On the title track, she sings, “Hit the open road into the great unknown/ With a pain so deep down into my bones/ Finally I had my very last warning.”
The album’s musings on life, love and overcoming are accompanied by soft guitar strums, with other stringed instruments making occasional appearances.
Seattle-based musician Eli West co-produced and played banjo, acoustic and electric guitar, while Danny Vitali from Point Reyes Station played bass and Bay Area bluegrass artist Amy Scher played the fiddle. Most of the album was recorded in 2016 at Panoramic Studios in Stinson Beach.
Ms. Eide collaborated with one of her musical heroes, Grammy Award-winning artist Peter Rowan, on the song “To Live and Learn,” in which she talks about leaving home for San Francisco when she was just 19.
Ms. Eide, now a Bolinas resident, grew up in Bergen, Norway, and moved to Copenhagen when she was 18. Shortly after, she fell in love with jazz musician Joshua Smith and eloped to the United States in 2006. She moved to Inverness a few years later and spent the last decade writing, recording and touring, first with Mr. Smith and now with her own band.
A self-described forest creature, Ms. Eide’s inspiration for the album came while driving the roads of West Marin. She remembers the moment she thought of the fiddle melody that begins the album, driving over Big Rock Ridge on Lucas Valley Road.
“The sound of the album, to me, is a reflection of the nature and our surroundings here,” she said. On the song “Moon in the Mirror,” the road becomes a metaphor for her new beginning: “Just five more miles down this county road/ And my backseats packed with a heavy load and I’m/ Travelling with the moon in the mirror,” the song begins. Later in the verse, she builds on the motif: “Well I took the keys and away I run/ In my barefoot feet towards the setting sun.”
The album title comes from a lyric in the song “I Dream a Highway” by Gillian Welch, whose songwriting prowess inspires Ms. Eide. Welch and Townes van Zandt, another folk artist, inform her old-timey sound. She says she strikes a balance between the personal and the universal.
“I try to not be too literal and say things in a poetic and subtle way,” she said, so anyone can make their own meaning of her lyrics. She sings often about living in the moment: “May not have been here yesterday/ May not be here tomorrow or ever again/ But we’re here, right now,” she sings gently on “Here Right Now.”
The last two songs on the album are a sonic shift indicative of the sound on her next album, due next summer. Fans can expect a more rock-influenced sound compared to “Moon in the Mirror,” with more drums, bass and electric keys to complement the banjos and fiddles.
In July, her whole crew from Nashville and New Orleans came out to West Marin for a week to record the album, on which she gets even darker and more honest. “I can’t worry about staying within one genre,” she said. “It’s a little bit of this a little bit of that—but it’s fully me.”
You can hear “Moon in the Mirror” at rainyeyesmusic.com.