Reviews: Things in my Mailbox
February 7th, 2010 • Album Review
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- The Well in Hell
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- Family Band
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- “New Attitude” by the Dirty Projectors
Family Band – Demo
This band hails from Brooklyn, NY but their sound is more notably rural. Indeed, the band doesn’t really participate or resemble the recent crop of popular music sprouting up from the area. According to them, their concerts are more likely to take place in barns, living rooms and backyards than in or around NYC.
The demo itself has five tracks of slow, meditative and moody folk. The songs are expansive with lapsteeel and echoes. The demo is free and available from the band.
Well in Hell –Demo
The Well in Hell is the solo project of Norweigian Kjetil Jenssen. Jenssen previously played drums in the short-lived and fabulous Norwegian hardcore act, The Spectacle. He has also played with Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie/The Microphones.
Here, Jenssen plays short, enigmatic folk tunes in English, with acoustic guitar. It’s a far cry from his work with The Spectacle, but very heartwarming and precious. Each song on here seems like a unique philosophical gift.
I remember seeing The Spectacle on their only US tour. The show was promptly interrupted and cancelled as it was simply too loud for the neighbors. Once the show was broken up, the drummer, Kjetil, serenaded the seated audience with some acoustic songs, some his own and some by The Microphones. The Spectacle was a large band by punk standards, with three guitar players, vocalist, bass and drums. It was interesting then—and still is now—to see the individual mind at work, moving out from behind the drum set to sing amidst the audience.
Dirty Projectors – New Attitude
Before Bitte Orca, even before Rise Above there was this masterful and strange Dirty Projectors release. The music on this one is much more akin to older material, The Getty Address and seems to be a similarly solitary piece of work.
It isn’t as immediately appealing as the sharpness of Bitte Orca, but songs like “Fucked for Life” and “Imagine It” stand out for their strangeness and beauty. Instrumental daringness and particularity—probably the group’s greatest strengths—are firmly, if a little obliquely on display here.
-Charles Thaxton
Charles Thaxton is the co-host of Songs from Mt. David, Sundays 2-4 AM on WRBC.