Labels: Carrot Top
Review by: Alex Deller
If I told you that I had witnessed much of what North America’s backwaters have to offer I would be a liar. I have never ridden in the back of a covered wagon, supped moonshine by a campfire or even worn a cowboy hat. In fact, much of the time I spend listening to music like this is spent feeling like an outright fraud. But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy it.
Thirteen songs of sombre, gothic Americana possessing a knack for dark storytelling and wry humour. We’re led through a world of homeless phantoms, dying soldiers and doomed goldminers with husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks lighting the way along dusty roads with sputtering Coleman lanterns. The path unfolds with the weave of his rich, stentorian tones and her fragile, otherworldly croon cushioned by a spacious backing of traditional folk instrumentation, laden with pedal steel guitar, banjo and musical saw, occasionally straying into less traditional territories such as gospel or mariachi.
Though we accompany many lost and tragic souls on their journeys and mull over the possible onset of the apocalypse on two separate occasions, the mood is not all gloom and thunderheads. Certain stories are threaded with a filament of dark humour “” one song, for example, telling of a man so mystified by the apparently bottomless hole on his land that he fashions a hoist using rope and a porcelain bathtub in order to investigate, a tale with no conclusion and the suggestion that there may not even be one. This fondness for the whimsical adds depth and character, a shadow of a smile in what might otherwise be overtly dour surroundings.
The songs carefully avoid the inherent risks of being flippant or twee, and instead create engaging dustbowl vignettes that recall the deadpan panache of Nick Cave meeting the subtle melodrama of Will Oldham head-on. And for those of us familiar only with shimmering high rises or suburban mediocrity then I guess this is as close to joining the wagon train as we’ll get this side of two weeks on a dude ranch.