If This Bed Was Made For Me had been issued in 1971 or 1973, it would have snugly fit into an artistic landscape where David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name or Judee Sill’s pair of albums demarcated a glass-like, vaporous take on how a singer-songwriter framed their compositions. In more recent times, some of what Fleet Foxes have done is also along these lines. From the new album’s opening track “The Ground Here,” through the floating “Life Inside the Hourglass” to crystalline album closer “Bud Worth Biting,” it is clear Biita Houdei knows exactly what she is doing.
Houdei’s quartz-like voice reverberates through arrangements foregrounding her acoustic guitar which also incorporate hymnal chorales, odd snatches of flute and saxophone, pitter-pat percussion and strings. There is a baroque, rather than jazzy, feel. Lyrics are allusive, touching on how the past colours the present, and on seeking a sense of place.
Growing up in the rural setting of Defiance, Missouri, Houdei currently lives in the Catskills, in the south of New York State. This Bed Was Made For Me was conceived and recorded during a period in Topanga, on the edges of Los Angeles. Part of her lineage is Iranian, and Biita – meaning “unique” in Farsi – is a nickname given by her aunt.
This has not arrived from the blue. Although it is the first album with “Biita Houdei” on its sleeve, she formerly recorded as LéPonds – where she was credited as Lisa Houdei. There was a debut digital-only album titled Heat in 2016. It was followed-up in 2018 by the nine-track CD/digital set I Was Dancing With My Dream Team. After this, odd digital-only tracks. May 2026’s “Life Inside the Hourglass” was the first release as Biita Houdei; the track is included on This Bed Was Made For Me. Much of the LéPonds material is very similar to this latest communiqué, albeit less produced and with more minimal arrangements. It is worth having a dig into this prior aspect of her music. Now, though, with its adoption of a new recording identity, the assured This Bed Was Made For Me seeks to draw a line in the sand between then, and what constitutes the present.
