Fenix

Raised in the small, farming community of Canowindra in Australia’s New South Wales, amongst a minuscule population of 2381, Payten learned to play piano and guitar in her house — with Billy Joel on near-constant rotation. She left the rural life in her late-teens to pursue a medical education in Sydney alongside her musical career. The dichotomy of those environments — the pastoral and the modern — is surely a guiding influence in Gordi’s music. Earthy, wistful folk songs are cloaked in delicate-but- bold electronic production. And what an effortlessly flooring voice to carry it all, at once fractured and brimming with richness. These are songs you could hear bouncing through the ...