Secret Album 6
You can hear them breathing before the delicacy lifts onto the air. Twinned and entwined, the two guitars dance around one another as human voices drone and intone biblical motifs, cuss words and longing – longing is the word. The opening number dies like bathwater draining down and segues into swamp banjo blues. This is all very live. We are stretched somewhere between The Stones and 1768. Thick swathes of forest and peeling wooden church-houses, a keening call from the past, a brilliant deception: dressed in civil war clothes, singing an acidic parody of sepia sentiment, weird modern wolves breathe vodka fury under the sacrificial lambswool.
The ballads break hearts and are filled with devastated mystery. They operate on the mind like photographs from an unreachable dream. Scenes from the small town rock and roll circuit speak of unfathomable sadness. Ruination and emptiness call from the souls of regular folks; immigrants,…—More Rants/Slates