You see the name, the title, and the cover (well, you no longer see the cover, I reckon) and you think “Middle Eastern stuff”. And for one track, you’re spot on. Then, this album goes off into a spacy jazz folk lo-fi direction, like some sort of Orientalist Calexico
Beautiful and unusual. Recommended.

*** 1. Soft, desertified folk music with minimal electronics
** 2. Bit of an insistent beat and yes, something in the lyrics about Jessica Simpson
*** 3. Now we’re getting to the good stuff, the sound of mysterious bazaars, hash dens,
all that stereotyped/clichéd stuff – drones, the just-off strings, buried drums,
distorted vocals, layered on top of each other
** 4. Jazzy sax, bits of conversation, and a forlorn quality to all of it, as if it’s all about
some lost cause
* 5. A bit deeper into the Whatthehell with even more fuzzed out conversations and
staticy guitar fading in and out
** 6. Frighteningly despondent ode to/lament for Billy The Kid
** 7. Detuned strings and then Nico comes in. WTF? No, not Nico, but might as
well be, Nico on the Doors’ “The End”; towards the end there is a spoken
bit, the last few seconds of which contain a couple of “fuck”s
*** 8. Gloriously robust and epic
*** 9. Would give Mazzy Star a run for its money with the gentle ballad just hinting at
guitar feedback, some barely there harmonica, and a reserved vocal; makes you
want to sleep the most dreamy, most deep, most sad sleep
* 10. Jazz: Raggedy-to-righteous; rinse, repeat, only much louder the second time