The Dreadful Yawns - Rest

The Dreadful Yawns - Rest - 2007

review from amazon.com

Alternately called nu school Neil Young, Fairport Convention, and Nick Drake, these Ohio soldiers of low-key country pop were the last band to hitch a ride on Greg Shaws emblematic Bomp! records before his sad departure. This release veers towards very mellow territory, for the bells and strings feel like sofa cushion versions of Velvet Underground and the gymnastic finger-lickin finger-pickin never feels too methodic and masterly, instead aiming for something fresh, full of heritage, and organic, especially on finer tracks like When I Lost my Voice, in which a pervasive melancholy that isnt browbeating fosters sympathy and a tug on the ol heart. Like Yo la Tengo on Fakebook, or relatively unknown bands like Bellwether, the band is able to navigate through the gates of country without falling prey to fake twang and buttered Osh Kosh posturing. It has the right amount of push, steel guitar echoes, and swing that can make the feet poke and patter. Candles lands in just about the same spot, the conjoined female/male vocals geling into gentle interplay, again, much like Yo La Tengo, forming a blanket of un-besmirched sonic gauze, all with cradling ease and lax, slow rhythmic sway. November Nights meets its maker somewhere between 1970s cosmic cowboy off-kilter unloading and Whiskeytown pawnshop folk. The organ fills all the gaps, similes fall from the tongue ( Love is like cancer/she reads through all the danger) and the vocals do have a tiny nod towards Fairport Convention elocution and artifice, a Brit-speckled delivery. Originally recorded by Tin Gerak, known for his days in Six Parts Seven, the overall texture is not lush, as the promo asserts, but well-separated, lilting, and permeable. The album, especially on tracks like Due South, feels like it is trying to the seminal album for Mojo this year: rustic and refined, sing-songwriter but choreographed with the presence of a fine inventory of players, symphonic and spare, and poetic and purposeful

 

01. Youve Been Recorded
02. Changing States
03. When I lost My Voice
04. Candles
05. Mountains
06. November Nights
07. Due South
08. We Go Up
09. Being Used to You
10. End of Summer 

  






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