Oh Vanille / Ova Nil

Originally, Diane Cluck’s intimate, handmade albums could only be found in the bins at Other Music. Her third album was the first to exist in a sizable run when Important Records reissued it in 2005. And while Oh Vanille/Ova Nil was originally conceived in Temecula, California, it was made in Brooklyn. One of the gems of the freak-folk era, even though Cluck never quite slotted into that Devendra Banhart scene. Cluck had a frank directness and enigmatic song construction that befuddled the critics of the time, and it still feels like an undiscovered secret.