Created during an artist residency in an old warehouse, now dedicated to such practices, in the raw landscape of Iceland, ‘Waiting Room’ echoes the feeling of isolation that comes from such a setting, imagined or real. The debut album by this Oakland native, following on from the contemplation of the arid landscapes of New Mexico on the 2022 EP ‘Holly’, ‘Waiting Room’ carries with it the liminal condition evident in its title, not so much as a transitional state but rather as a space for inner reflection, a kind of purgatory of and for a world in the process of collapse. A stripped-down album, the instrumentation is reduced to an essential core of guitar, field recordings, and sparse keyboards as a backdrop for Mohr’s voice, in songs suspended in a lo-fi fog in a game of shadows and haunting. Traced in dissonant tunings, Mohr’s songs range from the folky acoustic spectrum of ‘Driven’, ‘Driver’, or ‘Petrified’, tangential to the most stripped-down moments of Grouper or the enchantments of her compatriot Maria BC, to more electrified passages such as ‘Take It’, ‘Elevator’ and ‘Wheel’, which evoke 90s icons such as PJ Harvey or Courtney Love, mediated by a nocturnal aura, particularly evident in the mysterious abstraction of ‘Rated’ and ‘Cornered’. Like someone collecting memories and unfathomable remnants of their surroundings in the apparent safety of intimacy, to evoke them in that same unknown purity. BS