Composing on both sitar and guitar, and inspired by the Sacred Harp tradition, Wilson’s music bursts with fresh sounds and vivid engagement with one of America’s oldest musical traditions and with a deeply felt spirituality. She has cut her own path through the wilderness, through the rocky corridors of Philly women’s safe havens (audible in songs like “Royalene”) or the woods and streams of the rural South. Joined by instruments from the Chinese erhu fiddle to the hurdy gurdy, along with a full Sacred Harp-style vocal ensemble, Wilson’s lush, second full-length album ebbs and flows, united by her delicate yet urgent voice and straightforward, poetic lyrical visions. In complex, globally inflected songs, she chronicles nature’s vivid outbursts, our shared struggles for hope and connection, and the paradoxes that birth real joy. -rock paper scissors, inc. Aimee Wilson’s new album is inspired by the Sacred Harp, a Protestant tradition of unaccompanied vocal singing that can be heard here in its uncut form in the traditional “Detroit”. The other songs here are her own, and the Sacred Harp singing is set against the playing of her band, including hurdy-gurdy and Chinese erhu, and Wilson’s own singing, thick, quivering in ecstasy and utterly committed. (4/5 stars) -Financial Times Aimee Wilson is like an alternate-reality Gillian Welch. American “roots” in country-folk are readily discernible, but her groundwaters run deeper; and from them spring sounds at once Celtic and universal, brought to fruition through the use of ancient instruments like harp, hurdy-gurdy and Chinese erdu. The best songs on Unto Us the Sun burn bright with the embers of racial memory. There is something primal and archetypal afoot in the chanted closing of “Celebration” and the strange inevitability with which it occurs. On “Down Came a Rock” and “Suri”, Wilson’s voice quivers like the faintly heard spirits of lost civilizations. -PopMatters