Wednesday, March 23, 2016

ben collier - bardo junction b/w sour oats (tape/digital, sugartop records)

this is a tape that collects two albums just a hair over a year apart by collier, put together in one package, and where bardo junction hits that wandering off alone vibe, sour oats mostly brings out the band instrumentation in for solo dubbing company (plus a beautiful acoustic guitar rumbler of a closer).

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rough and tumble and rambling, there's a real outdoors and tranquil and reflective feeling, one you get from front-and-back porch blues, long car rides, washboard-thinking, dreaming of simpler days and howling it out to the moon, collecting tiny journeys and road-trips and notebooks filled with meaningful time, locating the ease in singing and searching out those found words from the day's country-yearn. in the pocket folk guitar needed for parallel lines of feeling and truth and exposition to flesh out the mysterious unquantifiable song-writing philosophy carrying the soul, just enough folkways-touch and older-time-sounding to push the work into a nice lo-fi and sung moment-and-place. an attentive approach to the lyrics and to the process of the song-build, the simplified parts are essential for the voice to find proper air and lift.  




here we go, a one-man party of broken-down band renditions of weekends lost at sea, too much drink, and not enough of the good kind of lonely so you have to hunt it down, trying to find the differences from lost americana and the now and how it should overlap and how it keeps you longing for other histories. but we can't get out of our own shadows, and sometimes you have to sit down and work that out. the key/spark is in turning times long ago old and the sound of humbler gear and instrumentation into a shared ride, taking up travel with what made music great from way back, the guitar playing and the readiness and the low maintenance approach to pouring out the blues, sitting up front with yr own thoughts and visions. looking for the song of yrself, you cook it up and become it, and live it. 


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