Song, by Toad

It took DC to introduce me to Langhorne Slim, when I first played Celebrity Chimp on these pages.  I don’t think I’d ever have explored him without some prompting because the name conjures up redneck cowboy country to me, and I avoid that music like the plague.  Thank fuck some people have more sense than I do.

It’s not redneck cowboy music by any means, but it’s got a touch of honky-tonk, a little country, some American folk and god knows what else.  It’s very traditional in that sense, but such a mish-mashed reinterpretation of those traditional things that the blanket term ‘Americana’ is about the best I think I can come up with.

This self-titled release is a truly great album.  The pace is so varied, you are taken from ragamuffin barroom clatter to wistful country-flecked balladry in moments – all engaging, spirited and powerful.  He’s a New Yorker, a couple of years younger than my little brother, but he gives the impression of a veteran with a significant back catalogue.  I was so fooled I went looking for one, and bar a few bits and pieces it just isn’t there.

His voice is forceful, but scratchy and vulnerable enough to make his sadder songs really touching.  For the most part however, the pace of this music is more driving than that, even the unhappier songs full of sound and pushing forwards with purpose, making it a real toe-tapping, swirling, joy of a record.  Huzzah for the Americana, this week.  I was sure I used to be an indie-kid.

Langhorne Slim – Rebel Side of Heaven
Langhorne Slim – Hummingbird

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Somehow the EP name ‘Withered Hand – Religious Songs’ makes a sort of skewed sense when you realise that Dan is singing about masturbation and such like. It seems like withering might be the sort of inventive punishment our splendiferous lord gawwd almighty might visit upon the unclean and the self-appreciative.

Especially singing choruses like ‘How does he expect to be happy, when he listens to death metal bands’, and given that the man himself actually looks like a death metal fan, the alt-folk (or something like that) that Withered Hand play can seem slightly incongruous in some ways.

Musically, this is a pretty boisterously strummed bloke-with-guitar sort of sound, with plenty of folk chipping in with things like cello, accordion and banjo to bring texture and a bit of depth, and Meursault’s Neil Pennycook sings backing vocals. It’s quite a standard, unsurprising format in many ways, so what is it that makes it special in this case?

Well Dan’s voice has a sort of croaky, scraping charisma to it, in the sense that he would probably ask me what the fuck I was talking about with statements like that. There’s a touch of the acerbic social misfit about the lyrics too, which speaks pretty directly to everyone’s inner awkwardness, although there’s no apologism about this. It’s quite a solid, defiant sort of a record actually, and perhaps this settled base comes from the same place that has given Dan the focus to find a band, and a delivery and a format that he clicks with. Either way, if they can keep this up there will be good things coming from Withered Hand, so keep an eye out.

I Am Nothing and Religious Songs are just superb, and the EP can be purchased from their MySpace page for the generously low price of about three quid, I think, so get Paypalling.

Withered Hand – Religious Songs

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