Choosing an album title is a difficult art. But when it works, it can become a key to the entire listening experience. That is certainly the case with James K’s “Friend”. The New York artist’s breakthrough album feels remarkably true to its name: a companion, a quiet embrace, a reassuring presence that never demands attention but somehow ends up holding it completely. Built from dream pop, trip-hop, shoegaze and ambient music, “Friend” creates a world that feels both intimate and expansive, angelic and earthbound, familiar and strangely elusive all at once. Long a fixture of New York’s experimental music scene, James K distilled the eclecticism of her earlier work into something brighter, warmer and more immediate without sacrificing any of its mystery. In a musical landscape often obsessed with urgency, James K instead offers something rarer: a place to stay for a while. This summer, that world arrives at Stay Out West.