Edith Judith

“We’re not going anywhere,” Katie Ernst (Twin Talk, Jason Moran) sings on “Bridge,” a dreamy standout on Edith Judith’s debut album, Bones & Structure. As the music burbles softly around her—a deftly plucked guitar theme, a drumbeat that alternates between keeping and disrupting time, a saxophone that swims in and out of earshot—she gives no clue whether that statement should comfort or concern the listener. It’s a line laden with competing meanings, as though neither she nor Dustin Laurenzi (Jeff Parker, Twin Talk, Bon Iver, Macie Stewart), the other half of Edith Judith, has ever settled on the song’s true intentions. Without sounding vague or detached, this Chicago-based duo thrives on such ambiguity, creating songs that are open-ended, unsettled, alive to as many implications as a listener brings to them.