Originally released in 2007 on the band's own
Burly Time
label and reissued the following year with two additional tracks,
Hymns for a Dark Horse
is that rarity, an album from the modern acid folk scene that doesn't sound like a hipster put-on by an act that five years before would have been trying to sound like the
Strokes
. Written when singer and guitarist
Phil Moore
and his girlfriend
Beth Tacular
were living in a remote rural cabin while
Moore
was working for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, tracking and cataloguing local birds, these songs are suffused with avian and other natural imagery, but in a very natural way that doesn't smack of the classic old rock band cliche "getting our heads together in the country, maaaaaaaaaaaan." Songs like
"Bur Oak"
and
"The Marbled Godwit"
have enough of the verbal mystery of vintage folk tunes to connect them to a larger musical continuum than the likes of
Joanna Newsom
can manage. Though the hipsterish oddness of the songs' arrangements -- alongside
's vocals and guitar,
Tacular
plays accordion and wallops on an old-fashioned marching band-style bass drum to keep time -- and
's typically unlovely indie rock voices keep
from sounding like a new generation
Dock Boggs
,
stays close to the folk side of the acid folk label. [However, the two new songs on the
Dead Oceans
reissue, recorded after producer
Mark Paulson
joined the band as a full-time member, adding bass and drums to the duo's previously spartan sound, show that this vibe may now be a thing of the past. Though the dark, droning
"Matchstick Maker"
merely sounds like a slightly fuller and more menacing version of the rest of the album's signature sound, the full-band
"La Denigracion"
sounds straight out of
Beirut
's faux-European playbook.] ~ Stewart Mason