"These songs were written over some of most tumultuous, painful, interesting and beautiful years of my life," Dayna Kurtz says of Rise and Fall, her seventh studio album and her first collection of original compositions in four years. "I'm not inclined to write a memoir, so I'm grateful to have some kind of record of this time."
The emotion-charged new set is a creative milestone for the New Jersey-born, New Orleans-based singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer as well as a compelling reaffirmation of the creative strengths that have already won her a fiercely loyal fan base. That audience stretches from Kurtz's home country to Europe, where she's toured widely to impressive sales and massive critical acclaim, with her song "Love Gets in the Way" becoming a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands.
The Washington Post called her voice "a deep-hued garnet of lifeblood and beauty," while L.A. Weekly rhapsodized, "Kurtz tilts her head back at an angle and spins melodic, earthbound poetry that sets loose demons only to dismiss them into the ether... Kurtz makes ordinary misery voluptuous." The Boston Globe stated, "There's no logical reason why Dayna Kurtz is not a full-blown star," star," and prominent Dutch op-ed writer Frits Abrahams recently referred to her as the "female Dylan."