Those all-important vital stats first then, with this being a debut album and all. This is yet another of those supergroups, of sorts, and a very indie one at that, the fruits of 3 men working together in spare time that you wouldn’t imagine they had, but do, somehow. There’s Jim O’Rourke, he of various bands and solo encounters on the fringes of the American alternative and now full time guitar botherer in Sonic Youth. And Wilco’s front and back men Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche make up this rather wholesome trio. The former of the latter two is also of course greatly involved with the Minus 5 indie supergroup. But time management as an issue drifts ever so quietly into insignificance within moments of pressing play.
This is music you can’t help but lose yourself in, shunning chronological constraints and discipline, like a cushion knitted from tweed and tin that still stays soft to the touch. 6 tracks stretched over 40 minutes? More like a sweet fleeting daydream that you’ll wake all too suddenly from. This is music designed to be played loud, really loud, not because it belongs to any sort of cliché ridden rock ‘n’ roll category, but because every last intricate touch needs to be heard. It is of course a sum of all their parts, in a random, slow-mo, mid-flight kind of way. Relaxed acoustic alt-country, softly delivered Art Garfunkel-esque words, queasy guitars buckling at the knee, songs with split personalities, viewed at obtuse angles.
‘So Long’ is the sound of one lone plucked guitar and voice with the other instruments waking up and dragging themselves to their feet with lazy random clatter, which is utterly hypnotising, if a little delirious. ‘You Were Wrong’ is Lennon-esque in its foundation, but filtered and fazed until it’s a beautifully fragmented melodic melt. ‘Laminated Cat’ is maybe the most usual of all the songs, starting off with a slight Simon & Garfunkel flavour and building into a think spinning eastern guitar line driven by rumbling tribal drums. With its ubiquitous layering and spontaneous directions it’s all a little like Tortoise unplugged. Well, unplugged a bit. If they’d ever done one that is. Which naturally they haven’t. If it sounded anything like this maybe they should.
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