Ambient/experimental neo-folk. Pretty, despairing, angry, guitar-centric, versatile. All-around achy, lonely, minimalist stuff. Pissed off but lacking the lungs, pissed off but sad. Three guys from Portland performing under an unpronounceable name. Lots of clear bright melodic fingerpicking throughout. It’s got a little Floyd in it. The progressions borrow a lot from math/prog without ever sounding hard or heavy. I keep trying to place the vocals, and I think I’m going to cave and invoke Led Zeppelin. I mean, really. Elements here of Grandaddy and Wilco and earlier Shins, but decidedly weirder and colder.

Something about this record gets to me. I guess beyond the creepy album art (dude with Cousin-It hair, hand in glove, holding donut-shaped balloon) and unsettlingly in-joke title (which I picked it up for, obvs). That the CD itself is screened with a close-up of aforementioned human hair sort of makes it for me. I’m not 100% sure what these kids are on about, but I have a pretty good idea, and it freaks me out.

Here is an excerpt of their Myspace bio: Bucolic Distortion. A lover’s Indian Burn. An Arctic Sun Tan. Aan’s music is both mordant and gorgeous. It is the product of a boy’s lust for companionship, isolated in the rural confines of a backwards Continental Divide. Aan is the music of someone whose love of love is ever apparent, but whose fear of it is just as strong.

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1. ambient somber opening, single picked minor-loop guitar and sigur-ros-type ‘ah’s, added tapped hi-hat as guitar speeds up. at 1:43, breaks into a completely unexpected grunge howler. think... STP?
2. uptempo cutesy 12/8 with zoomy high-pitched guitars and zeppelin vocals. in the last three minutes, slowws to a bitter downtempo drag and vamps a dark twangy refrain: “i promise to love you so long as it’s convenient for me.”
3. minor etude feel, fingerpicked gloom line. think: “is there anybody out there?” great subtle-clash overlay of a sweet alt-folk country chorus over the same unsettling guitar line. ENDS :35 to end (there’s a superfluous outro).
4. 7 min track. think: a very, VERY polite polvo. airy and thin to start. clean, complex picked guitar line over timekeeper bass. plinky raindrop falsetto vocals (not totally unlike grandaddy) that double the guitar melody. moves into a deeper looped guitar melody and normal-register percussive vocals in minute three. CUT at about 2:20 to end... starting around 2:17 to end, the outro (recorded kid voices in the distance, somber and slow guitar, high crackling vocals, very end-of-“your algebra”) is its own song.
5. old hawaii fingerpicked guitar morphs into eerie minor bends and slides. bird chirping. ambient backing vocals. achy and pretty. the most songlike track here.