Moody bedroom post-folk/slowcore solo project from Novelty, Ohio. Gentle guitars, brushed drums, occasional soft keyboard beats, ambient sounds, lots of lived-in sonic details. Songs about working dead-end jobs, staying home, feeling defeated by life, driving around aimlessly, being overwhelmed by the digital world. Frustrated by the present, insular but articulate, earnest but understated, aesthetically both intimate and ambitious——it’s like this guy’s the Fernando Pessoa of the Great Lakes region. This is one of the most vital, incisive, and engrossing explorations of mid-2010s American life I’ve heard. RIYL The Microphones/Mount Eerie, The American Analog Set, Sparklehorse. Favorites: 1-3, 1-4, 1-8, 1-9, 1-11, 1-12, 2-4, 2-5, 2-7 (during safe harbor), 2-12. FCC WARNING: 2-1, 2-2, 2-7, 2-16.

Disc 1
1. (3:44)—Sparse, dry, floating, with a chintzy drum beat and layers of minimal guitar.
2. (2:49)—Just minimal guitar and hushed singing. About going to shows by yourself.
3. *(5:01)—Simple keyboard and guitar, soft multitracked vocals, tinny field recordings. Becomes a loping low-light jam.
4. *(3:51)—Very slow, pensive keyboard ballad. Play with the next track.
5. (1:38)—Instrumental. Works as outro for the previous track, or intro to the next.
6. (3:12)—Slow, pleasant, swaying. Lots of sudden transitions: soft fingerpicking, then loud rock, then a bobbing jam, then a very quiet outro.
7. (1:29)—Instrumental. Pretty, short, pastoral slowcore jam.
8. *(9:23)—Muted but dramatic. Droning, melancholy. Close-miced, very slow guitar. “Alone in a rented Scion cube, I’ll slide off into nothing.”
9. *(5:54)—Mid-tempo, driving, noisy, almost post-punk.
10. (2:15)—Slow keyboard, chunky guitar. Fades nicely into the next song.
11. *(4:04)—Instrumental. Slow fingerpicked guitar, woozy keyboard. Brushed drums, pedal steel. Homage to one of the great slowcore bands.
12. *(4:23)—Slow, easy, rolling. About listening to The National on the road.
13. (4:32)—Multitracked bass clarinet. Slow, pretty guitar.
14. (3:14)—Slow, peaceful, pretty, warm, plodding “full band” jam. Fades into the next song.
15. (5:48)—Drone, field recordings, synth bleeps and bloops.

Disc 2
1. (3:20)—FCC (s***). Starts as pretty, gentle slowcore with gleaming keyboard, then gets noisy. “Every day the sun rises over the Old Navy and falls onto some s****y apartment building.”
2. (9:12)—FCC (f***). Slow, loose jam. Long, grainy, droning second half. “Drowning in debt with no prospects, living from check to check.”
3. (1:06)—Heavy, slow, lo-fi power-rock instrumental with ‘80s keyboard sounds.
4. *(2:43)—Slow, fragile, gets deep and heavy. “Seems like my friends are all buying houses while I’m cutting up someone’s bread at Whole Foods.”
5. *(3:12)—Slow plod, gorgeous, with deep bass and prominent keyboard. “I’ve been worrying that my favorite records have all already come out.” Microphones-esque second half.
6. (2:07)—Starts as breezy front-porch folk before the distortion comes in. Epic.
7. *(5:12)—FCC (f***). Mostly very soft singing and guitar. Riveting, crushing. “Now I’m missing my wife’s pregnancy, working overnight at a job I hate, just to keep our healthcare.”
8. (3:51)—Instrumental. Warm, slow, deep, reminiscent of Bedhead.
9. (2:22)–Slow, starts very calm, gets heavy and fuzzy. Brushed drums.
10. (2:56)—Instrumental. Plodding. Soft, insistent, lo-fi synth melody.
11. (1:28)—Instrumental. Lo-fi synth and guitar interplay. Slow hi-hat chug.
12. *(8:08)—Slow, long, dreamy intro. Quiet kick drum. Fades to dreamy guitar distortion, builds. Hypnotic, faded lo-fi dream-pop outro.
13. (6:07)—Slow, with another long intro. Somewhere between Sparklehorse and a really slowed down American Football.
14. (0:57)—FCC (f***). Lo-fi guitar fingerpicking.
15. (5:19)—Instrumental. Calming ambient-drone.
16. (1:44)—FCC (s***). Whispered singing, slow guitar strumming.