The “hymnambient” music of Leah Toth (Wooden Wand)—alter ego amelia courthouse—was seeded decades ago, when as a teenager she became the organist in her local southern Alabama church. “I remember being a little girl and thinking about, for the first time, melody and harmony. I stood beside my grandmother, who grew up during the Depression, singing these rough, beautiful Carter Family-style harmonies on hymns like “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” and “I Love to Tell the Story.” Just thinking about her voice all these years later gives me the best kind of chill bumps. When I was in high school she would come over and I would play her favorite hymns, and she would just sing and sing.” These hymns left indelible impressions on Toth even as she encountered in her youth, The White Album, modal jazz, and other secular music, and embraced as an adult the music of artists like Florian Fricke, Julius Hemphill, and Herbie Hancock. She is inspired by fearless modern avant-garde trailblazers like Marisa Anderson and Matana Roberts, as well as Rennie Sparks’ playful, existential lyricism. It is these intersectional affinities that inform amelia courthouse’s melancholic waking daydream music. courthouse’s rich and personal music combines vintage keyboards, decrepit upright pianos, open-tuned electric guitars, field recordings, and effects to evoke melody and movement within a mist of gauzy textures.