KDVS Rec.
Dead Western : Soften Your Screams into Sings (US,2008)***°
I pretty much liked Dead Western’s deep theatrical voice on his previous demo and cdr. Now it seemed that the image, presentation and context-provoking voice has matured very much, by using it in a more human and sensitive way, less deep, without losing the still fantasy provoking nature of it, its aspect becomes more romantic, directing, and more clear in the lyrics, and like a troubadour singing but then dreaming with them. I needed to listen a few times to this LP, -and the music deserves this-, for at first the voice and strummed guitar pieces come most to the fore, before the lyrical world came closer, and beautiful but sparse arrangements were revealed more as a next layer. It is nice to hear that there were some more worked out pickings on some of the songs. And especially the second vocalists work beautifully additionally to that. Brianna Lea Pruett who plays autoharp on “Beautifully powerful powerfully beautiful”, added indeed a beautiful, strange high pitched elves-like voice to Troy's own voice. Further we have sparse arrangements / improvisations of violin (Kyla Cech) and accordion (Alec K.Redfearn) and trumpet (Daniel Grisham), and who knows what else (I heard some kaz ooand some small reed /sax arrangement near the end too). All of such arrangements serve these songs well. Even more of this (like glockenspiel or so) wouldn’t have hurt this either.
An improvement in Dead Western’s songwriting which benefits the psych-folk scene, providing another moment to dream along in its own somewhat unique way of provoking such scenery. The naked girls in the forest on the front cover should work in that direction too.
