Sharada Shashidhar is an artist who is constantly exploring. While her first album, Rahu (2020), saw her mixing synths and skittish beats with her jazz-leaning compositions, she pulled back a bit on her dazzling sophomore release, Soft Echoes (2024), which sounded like an exotic, updated take on vintage Joni Mitchell. Now, with A Foot on the Ground, she’s combined those two approaches while simultaneously taking things several steps further.
A Foot on the Ground was recorded over the course of two years at Lucy’s Meat Market in Los Angeles, where she crafted an album by experimenting with previously untested tools and instruments. As a result, producer Pete Min has allowed Shashidhar the opportunity to refocus her songwriting. She writes that she hopes the listener will “come away feeling like at least one aspect of me could be seen in them. I want it to excite someone into trying something new.”
The record is certainly eclectic, seamlessly bouncing between different genres and instrumentation. Previous collaborators such as Caleb Buchanan, Timothy Angulo, and Devin Daniels are here, as well as new ones such as Mark Guiliana and Benny Bock. Shashidhar’s wordless vocals and muted piano join an exquisite string quartet arranged by Patrick Warren on the opening track, “With Myself”. However, the mood soon becomes more mysterious with “Escape Artist”, as her vocals, synth and key bass dance around an upright bass, drum set, and saxophone trio that conjure a mesmerizing form of ethereal jazz.
Shashidhar immerses herself in keyboard experimentation throughout the record, as her vocals sync with exotic synth textures and Daniels’ saxophone on the adventurous “Future Encounters”, resulting in a futuristic take on jazz fusion. There’s a similar vibe on the title track, with Shashidhar accompanying her vocals with pump organ, metal plates, and a gyil (a traditional West African pentatonic xylophone with wooden keys). Once again, the wordless vocals carry great emotional weight; no words are needed, as her voice reaches into the depths of her soul.
When she sings words, Shashidhar’s songs still carry a great emotional weight, as on the single “Reassurance”, which began taking shape when Min provided a vocoder and a loop was created. “From there, the rest of the elements layered around this idea,” she explained. “I wrote more, and Mark Guiliana’s tasteful drums glued everything together.” “Hold me closer,” she sings. “And when you see me, I’ll be OK / Everything is OK,” warmly underscoring the song’s title.
There’s a low-key, cosmopolitan dance feel to the record as well, on tracks like “Always Returning”, aided by the muted frenzy of a drum machine, and the throbbing pulse of “Dancing in Comfort”, where Shashidhar plays all the instruments herself. What makes A Foot on the Ground such a unique pleasure is that it never seems to settle on any one particular style yet manages to hang together with remarkable consistency. Like Kate Bush, Björk, or the aforementioned Mitchell, Sharada Shashidhar’s undefinable style is restless and constantly forward-thinking.