Ann Savoy - Another Heart - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Venturing into Incha limbo world between medieval tropes and modern-day decayInch, New Orleans musician Urq (half of art punk duo Spllit) returns with a new solo offering. Recorded over a single, intense month, This Dismal Village is a homespun document that sits somewhere between jittery punk, dreary psychedelia, and hooky bedroom pop. Recorded to 4-track, the record embraces limitation as a creative engine, resulting in a sound that is raw, unsettled, and deeply atmospheric. The album is set not in a fixed point in time or geography, but a liminal environment where dystopic visions and archaic fixtures exist side by side. In the dismal village, kings and witches share space with televisions, skyscrapers, and modern enterprise; organ fanfares echo down streets populated by disgruntled townsfolk and whispered gossip. It is simultaneously the dark ages, 1950s suburbia, and a 21st-century metropolis. Embracing anachronism was central to the project's identity, an attempt to collapse history into a single, uneasy present.Sonically and philosophically, the album sits firmly in the tradition of rough and raw cassette rock. Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand looms large as an influence, particularly it's ability to build an entire world through unpolished, first-take recordings. Robert Pollard's idea of the Inchfour P'sInch (psych, punk, prog, and pop) serves as a neat summary of the artist's musical instincts and each element can be traced right through the heart of This Dismal Village. Further inspiration comes from post-punk's so-called InchCalgary Sound,Inch a loose movement blending psych pop, post-punk, and math/prog elements with a home-recorded, unpretentious ethos. The result is an album that unrolls like a place wandered through, uneasy, occasionally familiar, and impossible to pin down in time. All captured on tape before it could disappear like an apparition, like a

Malvina Reynolds writes, InchStory telling and making rhymes have always been the thing with me.... Some years ago I got a guitar and was up to my neck in the folk songs rediscovered by the great collectors of that time. Pretty soon my verses were emerging with tunes attached.Inch This album features fifteen of Reynolds' songs.

Singer and songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter is emboldened on the follow-up to her debut album. She changes the pace with the rollicking InchToo Tired,Inch too defeated by love to even attempt to resist it. Tearjerker InchGoodbye AgainInch depicts a woman alone. Chapin Carpenter has seen what love can do, and she depicts it unflinchingly.