Little Mountain is the creation of Ross Godfrey, a member of trip hoppers, Morcheeba. With his partner, Amanda Zamolo, Godfrey had become a bit of a California Dreamer when, spending time in Santa Cruz, he began to write a song that for him captured some of the golden era of Laurel Canyon on the cusp of the sixties and seventies. The song, Catch Me was recorded by the pair with assistance from Will Sprott of The Mumlers and Dan Joeright (Drummer for Jim White and David Byrne) before Godfrey and Zamolo returned to the UK. Back home they cast about for a third member and a serendipitous moment occurred when they chanced upon a busker on London’s Southbank. Impressed, they invited Ste Forshaw to sit in with them resulting in him becoming the third leg of the tripod that is Little Mountain.
Forshaw adds an earthy tone to Godfrey’s LA haze, a yin to his yan perhaps and together the trio have crafted an album that ripples with sunshine melodies and harmonies allied to a strong beating heart rooted in a more Anglicised folk idiom. Godfrey embellishes the album with a plethora of instruments (vintage guitars , early synthesisers and Hammond Organs, bass, lap steel and drums) offering a texture that is warm and enveloping, at times recalling Steven Stills’ bluesy organic style as on the organ driven Hide Me From The Darkness. Elsewhere his experience with Morcheeba is utilised as he wraps Zamolo’s voice in a warm electronica fuzziness that’s not a million miles removed from early Beth Orton on What We Gonna Do. While Forshaw comes across more as a ploughboy than a cowboy on the folky Even More and the short instrumental Sound Mirror is like Pentangle meeting Portishead the meat here is in the swampy sludge of You Never Know and the keening harmonies of the opening song, Giving it Up. Altogether a fine listen.
Category Archives: Reviews
Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys. Ionia
It might not be a trend as yet but recently Blabber’n’Smoke has noticed bands that are using the basic tools of bluegrass and adding their own particular twist. Examples include Fish & Bird, Front Country and Run Boy Run where elements of jazz and chamber music are more prominent than backwoods Appalachian mountain music. Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys fit into this slot neatly with their all acoustic set up (guitar, mandolin, Dobro, banjo, double bass, cajon, harmonica and hambone) rarely breaking out at breakneck speed. Instead there’s a delicacy in the sounds they weave and although they sound nothing like them one is reminded of the way The Pentangle shook up sixties folk music when they used fused jazz and instrumental prowess to create their powerful hybrid. Of course one can argue that some bluegrass players such as David Grisman have been doing this for years but after several years of back to basics shitkicking roots music bands (and nowt wrong with that of course) the pendulum seems to swinging in the other direction. Anyway, the other striking point here is Lindsay Lou herself. With a voice that can accommodate folk, blues and jazz she is the focal point of the album. Her phrasing is elastic enough to navigate the twists and turns that some of the songs undertake although she never veers into vocalese. In addition when the band turn their attention to a more traditional sounding song such as on the excellent River Jordan she carries it off as if she were a born and raised Baptist soul singer.
The album itself was recorded in a four day session in the dining room of a clapboard house in the town of Ionia, Michigan with the band grouped around a couple of microphones. Although each member of the band has a primary instrument they swapped around a fair bit during the sessions with the end result that one is never too sure who’s playing what without recourse to the liner notes, testament to the instrumental abilities of Joshua Rilko, Mark Lavengood and PJ George III. They kick off with Hot Hands, a perky little confection which has an occasional similarity to Nick Lowe’s I Love The Sound Of breaking Glass. It’s an attractive piece but lacks the depth the band prove themselves capable of later on. There’s much more muscle on the brooding Everything Changed with the band charged up, the guitars vibrant and driving the song along with a fine mandolin solo towards the end. The Fix returns to the poppier sensibilities of the opening song but is less twee with some intricate vocal harmonies and from here on in the band settle down to weightier concerns. Old Song features mandolin and banjo over percussive acoustic guitar and is a fine example of their ensemble playing and harmony singing with a wistfulness in the words and in the playing which is as sweet as a mountain stream. Sometimes is a bluesy number with harmonica to the fore but the band adorn the song with pizzicato fiddle and double bass along with some snappy brushwork on the cajon. Sung by Mark Lavengood, Sometimes ends up sounding as if a classical string quartet were playing something from The Band’s Big Pink. There’s adventure too in the odd rhythms of House Together where they start and stop, change their time signature and doodle their way to the end of the song. Over this challenging backdrop Lindsay Lou moves from wide eyed home improver to imperious vocal dominatrix.
The album sails to its conclusion with a mighty punch beginning with the aforementioned River Jordan, a gorgeous song that is the most traditional sounding here. Here Between is another string driven chamber pop piece that flows wonderfully and the title tune, Ionia is a masterful nod to tradition, American and Celtic, with flatfoot stomping over a gorgeous melody that seems as old as the hills.
Ionia is available now and the band have a short tour of Scottish dates in May following an appearance at The Shetland Folk Festival. Dates are here
David Corley. Available Light.
It’s not often that one comes across a debut album from a 53 year old. It’s even rarer for that album to be a stone cold cracker, an instant classic (if such a thing exists), an album that immediately rewards and then gets better on repeated listens. Well, David Corley has achieved this with Available Light, ten songs of experience and at 53 Corley has a lot of experience under his belt. Raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Corley attended the University of Georgia leaving at the age of 20 after a series of “ecstatic visionary and mystical experiences” if we are to believe the biography. There followed 30 years of wanderlust and odd jobs coupled with a voracious reading and writing habit. Following cardiac problems he returned to Lafayette which brings us up to date and to the album.
Produced by Canadian Hugh Christopher Brown Available Light is an album that shuffles and stumbles with a wonderful, almost homemade charm. That’s not to say it’s lo-fi, indeed its wonderfully warm and organic, meandering for its 55 minutes in a magnificent manner. Corley’s voice is lived in, deep but not rough, a gruffer version of Willard Grant Conspiracy’s Robert Fisher while his delivery (and some of the song arrangements) remind one of John Murry on The Graceless Age.
The band (Gregor Beresford, drums, Tony Scherr, bass, Kate Fenner and Sarah McDermott, background vocals and Hugh Christopher Brown on piano, hammond b-3, clavinet, wurlitzer, and vocals) create a fine Southern sound similar to the sounds created by Eddie Hinton and Tony Joe White, swampy, blues infused and soulful with the female vocalists perfectly complementing Corley’s vocals. A highpoint is acheived on the tender Lean, a song that eschews the rumbling guitars that weave like Virginia Creepers throughout the album for a short piano led ballad with Corley’s voice emotion packed amid excellent female harmonies. Here Corley waxes poetically, possibly influenced by Walt Whitman as he sings
the river moves
through the sand archives
i might have been holding her up –
i’m not gonna this time
i relinquish control
i think it softens my eye
i believe in the power of this moment
but i let it wash over the bow
i believe
you got to lean into it
Corley is able to deliver a relatively straightforward narrative as on the dream like Easy Mistake where he opens the song with
I hopped up into my truck
but I headed to the wrong bar
got way too fucked-up
started wishin’ on the wrong star
– but the sky, man, it’s so large….
that’s just an easy mistake
but many of the lyrics on the album have a poetic quality from the “life as a movie” quality of the opening title song to the closing epic The Calm Revolution where Corley seems to allude to climate change. Married to the cool crisp funk of the title song or the hazy shimmering guitars of the seven and a half minute closer the words flow as easily as the music creating an atmosphere that is nothing less than magical. Definitely an early contender for an album of the year.
The Kennedys. West.
Husband and wife team The Kennedys have been delivering their particular blend of harmonic folk pop, influenced by the likes of Buddy Holly and Nancy Griffith for 20 years now and West is the first of three proposed albums to celebrate this milestone (the others will be solo efforts from both Pete and Maura Kennedy). West, it has to be said, is not a demanding listen but there’s a freshness and sense of joy in there with some sparkling guitar from Pete Kennedy and powerful vocals from Maura. Overall the album recalls earlier times with a wisp of the 60’s and 70’s and acts like The Mamas and Papas, Geoff and Maria Mulduar and The Byrds resulting in a variety of songs that have a sunny disposition, perfect for listening to as spring awakens.
All is not sweetness and light in some of the lyrics and there’s a sense of grit in the sinister sitar curls of Signs and the brooding bluesy Black Snake, White Snake, proof that the duo can get down and dirty when required. However the breezy open road sound of the opening song West points the album in the general direction it’s headed. Elegy is a Laurel Canyon speckled gem that could have been written by John Phillips while Jubilee Time is a sweet and weary trip to Gene Clark land. Buddy Holly looms large on the retro styled Locket (a debt acknowledged in the liner notes) with Pete Kennedy nailing Holly’s strat stylings excellently and his guitar work is again to the fore on the sing-along country rock of Southern Jumbo. Bodhisattva Blues is as far removed from the similarly titled Steely Dan song as can be imagined as the duo get all rootsy on a rollickingly good song that isn’t a million miles away from Froggie Went A Courtin’, excellent toe tapping stuff indeed.
There are two covers here, the first, a John Stewart Song, The Queen Of Hollywood High (from his album Blondes). It’s the only song on the album to have a full band playing and there’s a fine extended guitar solo towards the end but it doesn’t approach Stewart’s guttural delivery. Perfect Love, written by John Wicks of The Records is more successful as it bathes in jangled 12 string glory. They close the album with Good, Better, Best, written by Pete Kennedy to celebrate their 20 years together. Delivered in an Everly Brothers style it’s simple and eloquent and shows the pair at their best.
The Kennedys are touring in support of the album release and will be in Glasgow on Thursday 30th April at the Woodend Bowling Club.
Listen to Southern Jumbo here
Tom Brosseau. Perfect Abandon. Tin Angel Records
Apparently Perfect Abandon is North Dakota musician Tom Brosseau’s ninth album although he’s new to Blabber’n’Smoke. Googling his past releases reveals critics’ tendency to link him in with early sixties folksters while he varies his approach to recording, solo or band based at times. However it’s the current release we’re looking at here and while it’s a bit of a curio there’s no doubt that Brosseau has crafted a very fine set of songs that together draw the listener into his world, a world he observes and relates to with an air of detachment and reports on with an almost childlike sense of wonder and discovery.
This sense is reinforced by the simple recording process, perfectly captured by producer John Parish, with Brosseau on acoustic guitar accompanied by guitarist Ben Reynolds (from Glasgow’s Trembing Bells), double bassist Joe Carvell and drummer David Butler. Sat in front of one microphone on a theatre stage in Bristol they recorded the album live with no overdubs over two days. The result is an intimate sound, warm and engaging with the band sounding as if they were sitting beside you with the percussion in particular rattling around the room. It’s not lo-fi and it’s not weird folk but it is akin to some of the lesser known folk artists of the sixties such as Ed Askew while its general ambience is not too far removed from Skip Spence’s Oar.
The album opens with its simplest song, the talking blues of Hard Luck Boy featuring Brosseau’s gossamer voice and guitar. Delivered as if humorist David Sedaris was inhabited by the ghost of Woody Guthrie it sets Brosseau up as an abandoned child and although it might be a flight of fancy one can imagine the remainder of the album as an attempt to recover from this. Roll Along With Me introduces the band with squirrelly guitar lines over a loose rhythm section. There’s a train metaphor here but it’s not a barrelling new frontier feeling that’s evoked, rather the lyrics are introspective and narcissistic and the locomotive stutters along the way. Tell Me Lord is a supplication asking the Lord to explain the singer’s existential angst as he rails against his isolation and loss, at times almost howling. Take Fountain and Landlord Jackie are narratives describing a lost boy in an adult world with the words rushing out, word salads seeking to make sense of things and here the recording method perfectly suits as the sounds envelop the listener allowing Brosseau’s voice to worm its way in. There’s a disconnect in the anthem to an Eden that is Island In the Prairie Sea as Brosseau sings as if he’s imagining himself inside a picture postcard wishing himself into the scene. As he describes his imagined paradise there’s a pervasive sense of loneliness in the delivery. In this vein My Sweetest Friend might be retitled My Sweetest Imaginary Friend as Brosseau casts blame for his wrongs elsewhere. The album stutters to an end with the magnificent waywardness of The Wholesome Pillars, a song of despair and hope that recalls Bonnie Prince Billy and features the ensemble at their gloriously ramshackle best.
Asleep At The Wheel. Still The King. Proper Records
Celebrating The Music of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys runs the banner under the album title and aside from that there’s precious little to say about this fabulous album; if you’re a fan of Asleep At The Wheel or Western Swing then you’ve probably already bagged this one. However there are folk out there who might not be so enamoured of the genre and who might be persuaded to dip a toe in the water, if so then this is as fine a place to start as any.
Western swing was a jazzy big band country pop phenomenon in the late thirties and forties, fiddle and pedal steel taking the place of sax solos and Bob Wills And His Texan Playboys were the kings of Western Swing. Asleep At The Wheel, led by the irrepressible Ray Benson appeared from the Austin, Texas melting pot of the early seventies, swinging with a vengeance and have been doing so ever since. Still The King is in fact their third tribute to Wills and pretty much follows the same formula, a roster of well-known country artists backed by Benson and the band. With several of the songs featured on all three albums (along with a few of the guest artists) one might wonder why Benson continues to record these. Well, Still The King features some of the younger country musicians who have come to prominence over the past decade with Old crow Medicine Show, The Avett Brothers and Pokey LaFarge all making an appearance. As Ray Benson told Rolling Stone recently “This album is just me trying to get younger and older Bob Wills aficionados together. Every time we put one of these out, I always say it’s the last one. But I shouldn’t say that because it’s not like this music ever died.”
So here we have 22 Western Swing classics, every one a winner really. The old timers are all here, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Del McCoury, George Strait, Robert Earle Keen, Lyle Lovett along with two surviving members of the original Texas Playboys, vocalist Leon Rausch, now aged 86, and sax player, the 92 year old Billy Briggs. There’s a host of others, all bringing something unique to the project but we only have space to mention a few favourites. The Avett’s have great fun with The Girl I Left Behind Me as they get back to their roots. Lyle Lovett croons as only he can on the bluesy Trouble In Mind while Brad Paisley does a great job on My Window Faces The South. Robert Earl Keen dives headfirst into the tongue twisting Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas with Benson duetting (and a special mention here for the very fine pedal steel solo, sublime!). Old Crow Medicine Show deviate somewhat from the overall sound as they basically overlay their own act over Texan swing pedal steel on their fiddletastic and frantic version of Tiger Rag. Of the youngsters Pokey LaFarge perhaps comes out tops as he really lets rip vocally towards the end of What’s The Matter With The Mill, small wonder as he’s been playing this type of music for the past decade. As for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, well, they stamp their authority on their respective numbers (Navajo Trail and Keeper Of My Heart) and both are excellent.
Sure, the songs are somewhat corny but these days corny might actually be hip and there’s no denying that throughout these 22 songs the playing is exemplary with some excellent fiddle, mandolin, piano and pedal steel all present. If you dig classic country then this is a no brainer. Buy it, get the other tributes and then seek out other Asleep At The Wheel classics and maybe some Bob Wills originals, you’ll be a satisfied soul.
Findlay Napier. VIP Very Interesting Persons. Cheerygroove Records
Findlay Napier is himself, a very interesting person. Schooled in traditional Scots folk music he has over the years moved into a more alternative scene while retaining his traditional connections especially in the educational work he undertakes. While his tenure in bands such as Back of the Moon and Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers have kept him well in the folk limelight he also helms the alternative music showcase Hazy Recollections that is a feature of Celtic connections and other festivals.
Very Interesting Persons, his solo debut, grew out of a song-writing project Napier undertook with Boo Hewerdine last year. The pair lighted on the idea of concentrating on potted biographies of people with interesting life stories and, Wikipedia in hand, they crafted over two dozen songs, since whittled down to ten. The end result is an album that intrigues and delights in equal measure. A delight to listen to with Napier’s sweet loamy voice grounding the whole in a Celtic folk fashion while the players adopt different styles incorporating folk, country, blues and even skiffle. Intriguing as Napier’s lyrics shed a light on the cast of characters in an impressionistic style, not story songs but songs behind the stories. With brief notes on the VIP’s in the liner notes the listener is free to follow up the stories , a task that has certainly led to some fine elucidation here at Blabber’n’Smoke but on the simplest listening level VIP is a bit of a treasure.
The album opens with Hedy Lamarr, a song that perhaps unveils the most interesting nugget of information here as it seems that Lamarr was an inventor who developed a wireless system for guiding torpedoes during the Second World War. While this is now seen as the precursor to Bluetooth technology at the time Lamarr was somewhat chided and told that she would be more useful entertaining the troops. The lyric alludes to this as Napier sings Hedy Lamarr you know your place you’re just another pretty face. Meanwhile the song itself is a regretful lament with lap steel guitar from Gustaf Ljunggren (who appears throughout the album) and plaintive harmonies from Gillian Frame offering a sepia stained portrait of a woman whose intellect was buried by her looks. Napier continues in this vein throughout the album, the songs and arrangements fitting the stories like a glove. There are heroes in decline, others forgotten, lost or abandoned; there’s no triumph here. There’s no room here to detail them all and as we said the album is a bit of a primer, listen to it and you will be seeking to flesh out the stories. Suffice to say that Napier and Hewerdine hit the nail on the head each time allowing one to wallow in the gritty blues grit of The Man Who Sold New York, the Gerry Rafferty folkiness of Eddie Banjo, the bitter sweet Americana country of A Shame About George, the dappled winsomeness of Valentina, the 60’s folk picking of The Sport Of Kings and finally the Celtic mists of Angel Falls. The album is a trip, a trip inside the head and a trip to the library. As we said earlier, a bit of a treasure.
Allison Moorer. Down To Believing. Proper Records
Break up albums. Some folk think that the dissolution of a romance is the fuel that fires greatness and can cite a litany of recordings to prove their case. Well we’re not going there right now although Down To Believing is Allison Moorer‘s first album since her marriage to Steve Earle ended. Earle has trucked off to Texas to dig some blues and Moorer spends her time between Nashville and New York where her son John Henry who has been diagnosed with autism attends school. In interviews Moorer has been quite explicit regarding her sense of anger and self blame regarding her son’s condition and this is apparent on the blistering bluesy howl that is Mama Let the Wolves In. Produced by Kenny Greenberg the album as a whole is a return to the rock laced songs Moorer delivered on 2008’s Mockingbird album, quite a distance away from the gentler Crows, her last release. While the marital breakup underpins the plaintive pedal steel laced title song and the somewhat syrupy ballad If I Were Stronger could also allude to the pain involved in becoming Mr. Earle’s seventh ex wife, for the most part Moorer delivers a solid set of songs seesaw between Nashville gloss and country grit.
Wish I, the aforementioned If I Were Stronger, Tear Me Apart and Thunderstorm/Hurricane all seem destined for playlist attention, somewhat overproduced and melodramatic. However the sinewy opening song, Like It Used To Be, the disarming ballad, Blood (written for her sister, Shelby Lynne) and the very fine and zippy Back Of My Mind show that Moorer has the chops to deliver some choice country rock and soul. She throws in a worthy cover of Creedence’s Have You Ever Seen The Rain before closing the album with her best offering, Gonna Get It Wrong. This Dobro driven lament is a magnificent closer eclipsing all before it as Moorer bares her soul and the band hunkers down in empathy to create a miniature gem.
Mark Utley. Bulletville. Sleep Cat Records. This Is American Music
Blabber’n’Smoke first came across Cincinnati’s Mark Utley when we reviewed Magnolia Mountain’s album Town And Country back in 2012. A double album that spanned the breadth of country rock from folky roots to grungier grooves Town and Country was followed by Beloved which delved into a Muscle Shoals direction while Utley simultaneously released a solo album that hankered more to his country leanings. His next step was to form a band that would perform the country songs from the solo album and hence Bulletville was born. A splinter group of sorts Bulletville features Magnolia Mountain members Renee Frye (vocals), Jeff Vanover (guitar), and Todd Drake (drums) who are joined by bassist Ken Kimbrell, keyboardist Ricky Nye and pedal steel guitarist John Lang. Here they deliver a solid package of tear stained and heart wrenching country songs that run the gamut from George and Tammy like laments to beer fuelled honky tonking gut busters fuelled by lashings of pedal steel.
The album opens with the loping bass into to Good Timin’ Girl, a breeze of a song with a classic bittersweet country tale that could have been written by Dolly Parton and sung by Kenny Rogers, in fact if Rogers or any of his ilk ever took this on then it would be a guaranteed hit. As it is the performance here is exemplary, Utley almost croons the words while Frye adds a multtitracked refrain, the pedal steel is sweet and honeyed and Nye offers up a fine piano solo. Wish You Were Her however steers well clear of the charts and heads for the bars as the band sway into Ameripolitan territory and the guitars grimace instead of smile. A woozy waltz time lament with a seventies feel courtesy of the electric keyboards and fuzzy bass line it sees Utley and his partner sharing a table but separated by miles of estrangement. The album is packed full of these wonderful odes to lost or failed love with Utley mining the past and coming up with new treasures such as the classic couplet “I just can’t remember to forget” on the honky tonk tones of Remember To Forget while Honey I’m Home weeps wonderfully as Utley swaps the family home for the local pub in an attempt to drown his sorrows. One Heartbeat At A Time is another break up song but it’s delivered with the commercial heartbeat that John Hartford sounded out on Gentle On My Mind and is another example of the commercial potential contained herein. While all of the band are in excellent form here Renee Frye in particular sparkles with her harmony support with Only In Our Minds an excellent country duet. She has two showcases here, the rolling and tumbling boogie Firecracker where she is as sassy as Loretta Lynn while The Only Thing is another tear jerking lament offering the female counterpoint to Utley’s songs of loss.
If this were all the album would be a winner but they throw in a couple of belters just to up the ante. Four In The Morning swaggers in with a muscular swing as beefy pedal steel and swirling organ churn and boil over a menacing rhythm producing a song that has the heft of a Joe Ely song back when he was a pal of The Clash. Jesus Wept is simpler in its delivery with some Bakersfield country in the twang guitars as Utley sings “I’m broke as hell, all my bills are due, My girlfriend’s mad and my wife is too” on a song that just about encapsulates the stereotype of red necked country music lovers. It’s a bit of a hoot. Utley closes the album with the only cover, a version of fellow TIAM artists, Great Peacock’s Bluebird which he dresses up in warm vocals and sweet pedal steel murmurings, a sweet end to a meaty album.
Dave Desmelik We Don’t Want A Dying Flame.
Ninth album from North Carolina’s Dave Desmelik who Blabber’n’Smoke last reviewed here describing Deep Down The Devotion as a “song cycle of life and death and the little that matters in between.” Desmelik followed that one with an album of 16 instrumentals on Instrumental Swim and on We Don’t Want A Dying Flame he offers a mixture of instrumentals and self penned songs that delve deeper into the existential angst he conjured up so well on Deep Down. Again he plays the majority of the instruments himself (with some assistance from Josh Gibbs who plays lap steel guitar on five numbers and Andy Gibbon, bass guitar on four) and while there’s a homespun feel to the album the sound is excellent, at times recalling, as we said last time, the sparser moments of Richmond Fontaine.
The album opens with the five minute instrumental, Hyper Fatigue which sounds as if The Penguin Cafe Orchestra were backing John Fahey with nimble guitar picking and wheezy keyboard to the fore. The tune meanders but never falters, groping its way through some ambient electric guitar grumblings and ken speckle percussion. At its end we stumble into the stark landscape of Destruction, a dark acoustic song menaced by angry fuzzed fretwork with Desmelik describing a dystopian nightmare, his voice resigned and weary. Over its six and a half minutes the song grips the listener and while there are echoes of Eef Bazerley’s work here it’s a miniature masterpiece. L-I-F-E offers a ray of light with its audio verite recording of children at play over some fine acoustic guitar picking while the following No Words To Describe pays tribute to the mother child bond. Red Collar, Statue, Two Gifts and Sand Toe are handsome instrumental interludes dotted throughout the album, they’re miniatures compared to the opening tune and lighter in mood with Desmelik’s guitar compelling but the meat is in the songs here. We’re Older Now (Ode To OBJ) harks back to a band Desmelik played in (Onus B. Johnson if you need to know) and again Eef Barzeley of Clem Snide comes to mind as the song falters, in danger of becoming a waltz time country piece but teetering and never falling. It’s a wonderful ramshackle, wrecked and honest ramble through some memories and a very fine song indeed. Josh Gibbs’ lap steel enlivens On The Clock as Desmelik delivers a gnomic self help guide which buzzes and burns with a sweet grace while Stretch continues in this vein, both musically and lyrically as Desmelik describes life as a set of emotional and physical callisthenics. The last song Do You Even Know, another swooningly gorgeous melange of guitars, belies its sonic attractiveness as Desmelik subverts the usual singer songwriter confessional memoire with a series of vignettes before asking the titular question begging the listener to wonder. The album closes with another instrumental, reeB aniloraC (read it backwards) that rumbles and rambles.
We Don’t Want A Dying Flame is an idiosyncratic album. Desmelik has a somewhat unique talent that reveals itself here on close repeated listens although some of the songs are immediately arresting. The instrumental byways scattered throughout might dilute the impact of the album somewhat but there’s no question that he’s a singular voice worth hearing.