Begun as the spin-off of a spin-off, roots-centric folk band, The Cave Singers, was started by Derek Fudesco of Pretty Girls Make Graves and Murder City Devils. Apparently, the Seattle band were never big fans of folk music, nor did they ever intended to play it, but then, if this the case, how can it be that the trio have released one of the most hypnotizing folk albums heard in a long time?
Invitation Songs uses banjos, washboards (occasionally played by PGMG Andrea Zollo) and melodica’s to recreate ghosts of lost lovers, Civil War marches, abandoned railway cars and chain-gang musings.
Guitarist Derek Fudesco’s bottom-end acoustic work sounds like Mississippi John Hurt’s soft, rolling finger plucks. Singer, Pete Quirk, has an appealingly nasal voice whilst drummer, Marty Lund, plays like he’s slapping a newspaper on a kitchen table.
Ultimately, the most successful track on the album comes from the gentle, percussion-free lullaby, ‘Helen’. Over a fingerpicked melody, Quirk pours his heart out a fitting analog for his quickening pulse.
However, even in small, sporadic doses, the band lends a greater depth and colour to their debut’s sepia-toned surface through the eerie combination of nasal bar-napkin poetry and clean, cyclical guitar melodies.
The drumming is statically sparse, at times rolling into a naturalistic crackle whilst songs like ‘Royal Lawns’ and ‘Bricks of Our Home’, feel boundless and fresh, bristling with pure rustic charm and backwoods sentiment. Invitation Songs is indeed one of the most genuine pieces of new music to come out of the hipster-infested woods in a long time.
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