Dark, smoky, mournful gloom folk. Kimberly Morrison is the Dutchess, Jesse Lortz is the Duke. Oh, these kids sound beleaguered. Just-hauled-ass-across-the-plains-in-a-covered-wagon beleaguered. Their youngest probably died of dysentery. Not even sore over it anymore, just tired and heavy-eyed. You can hear the dust and dryness, no lie. Fine, I’ll drop the inevitable: Cash, Jagger, Dylan. At times, the male singer sounds like Beck. Low-voxed sultry chick harmonies too. Could score an everyone-dies-in-the-end western with a doomed romance subplot. Well, at least this stuff would be at home on the Kill Bill soundtrack. Good tunes to eat shotguns to.

try: 2, 5, 1, 10
FCC: 6

*1. loose acoustic waltz, majorly bummed vocals (and fairly wailed chorus). lone bass drum & tambourine. awesome electric guitar (twang!) takeover.
*2. mid-tempo. boy/girl vox. sad as shit violin. NICE call-and-response verses. very rich, textured stuff. “i’m so wrong inside.”
3. upbeat, optimistic honky tune with unexpectedly morbid lyrics. guy starts off singing sweetly about his wife expecting a baby, freaks out about being tied down, then choruses “let it die”. muffle. face.
4. downtempo steamroll nodder. deep twang guitar scale runs (a la the intro to “she said she said”).
*5. in a word: unsettling. mid-fast creepy moany chant backdrop under angular parallel-move twang guitar. clonky, violent piano. spooky/ominous instrumental vamp. “the world has broken down / you know you’re gonna drown.”
6. FCC “fucked up” an attempt at uptempo. mostly twang and tambourine. like a party balloon not quite inflating all the way.
7. oh, ouch. midtempo twang and hangman drums, simple lyrics to the effect of “oh fuck off, i don’t like you!” not totally unlike more prickly stuff by the magnetic fields.
8. mid-fast strummer, quick fingerpicking and tambourine. “there’s a shadow walking with me all the time.” very cash.
9. chick vox over a lone slow guitar. about a cheating lover. unexpectedly dramatic chorus (big vocals, big violin). “i can see it in your eyes, you don’t belong to me”
*10. 6/8. downtempo. high piano keys and latecomer beam-me-up electric guitar. indifferent, purposeful vignettes about drowning in rivers or slowly wasting away in remote places (caves, mountains, deserts) by choice. “scorpions crawling all over my face / my body was covered with flies”?! real men kill themselves with nature!