Discuss this and all of your favorite musicians in our forums.
Have you heard this album? Give us your rating above, 5 being best.
Pinetop Seven Beneath Confederate Lake
Empyrean Records
Most compilations of b-sides and rarities often feel tossed off - a mere cash-in at a timely moment, a way to unload below-par songs, or an excuse to tour yet again. What’s startling about this collection (which spans nearly a decade) is how cohesive, valuable, and relevant it is. This is no sell-out.
Track listing:
01 High on a Summer's Tree
02 Western Ash
03 Two Dead Men in a Vermont Graveyard
04 Lewis & Clark, Pt. I
05 Canteen
06 Hurry Home Dark Cloud [Alternate Mix]
07 Promise and the Dream
08 Fadograph of a Yestern Scene
09 Afterthought
10 Beneath Confederate Lake
11 Lewis & Clark, Pt. II
12 Downstate
Since their inception in the mid-nineties, Pinetop Seven has been crafting a literate, wistful hybrid of folk, country, jazz, and pop. As this collection shows Pinetop Seven are a feverishly curious bunch, with cuts from various sessions, side-projects, and even film soundtracks. But behind all the variety and exploration lies Chicago-based Darren Richard, whose surreal lyrics are delivered with an eerie whine.
For something that should sound jumbled together, this album manages to remain consistently strong - even instrumentals like opener “High on a Summer’s Tree” have a strange, melancholic glory about them. The entire affair feels like the set of a Western movie, with rolling tumbleweeds and bad men trying to do right. Even the cover of Tom T. Hall’s “The Promise and the Dream,” an anti-Vietnam ballad, comes off in sepia. “America,” Richard croons, “what happened to the promise and the dream?” Slightly melodramatic, perhaps, but the delivery is sincere enough to have you shed your disbelief. Perhaps that’s the key behind Pinetop Seven’s power, and this album’s core: its lack of irony. Despite sounding occasionally over-lush (“Canteen”) or occasionally forced (the admittedly catchy surf/country hybrid “The Western Ash”), this is not an ironist’s album - these songs are sent out without a wink or a grin, which empowers them all the more. Some could take on country-folk and make it smarmy, or add on a Tom Waits sheen of eccentricity, but numbers like “Hurry Home Dark Cloud” are gorgeously sincere, telling of heartbreak and existential despair that needs no era. And remember, these are just the left-overs.
