quite surprisingly, this was sent to me by michele poulos from tanakh. it's a surprise because this is definitely not the type of music that we normally cover here. i can be objective though, so here goes.

saunders hollow
[2007, camera obscura]

tanakh's anchor is jesse poe, principal singer/songwriter and guitarist. outside of that tanakh seems to be a fairly sprawling collective of musicians. oddly enough, their myspace page doesn't list anyone that contributed on this cd, other than jesse, as actually being fixed members of the band. they're all mentioned under extended family. okay. amongst the seventeen total participants listed on the liner notes are alex neilson (scatter, directing hand, volcanic tongue, richard youngs collaborator as well as jandek's drummer), isobel campbell..yep, that same isobel campbell, formerly of belle & sebastian and gentle waves, handling backing vocals, and then there's michele poulos who takes on the lead vocal duties. from what i've gathered, their members are spread out between richmond, virginia and italy.

it's been so long since i've listened to anything like this that i'm struggling to form relevant reference points. my mind's blank. tanakh have put out a few previous albums, none of which i've heard, but saunders hollow has the band in an indie rock/alt. country mode. heavier on the ac side of things, in instrumentation, mainly. michele's vocals aren't annoying, like most with alternative country can be, no offense to neko case.
ladybird gets us off to a falsely depressive start. over somber string arrangements we're given some of these life affirming lyrics, "i'm so bored of waking up". thankfully, michele's down-trodden vocal melodies are a highlight. the following marcel proust would be my favorite track, if it weren't for poe's vocals making their lone entry to play the gainsbourg to michele's airy bardot. or maybe the hazlewood to her nancy sinatra. lee's voice is great though, so that i could go for. honestly, it's not enough to sink this song's ship, i just think it would've benefited more by sticking with the feminine vocals. it's a far less severe sounding song with some catchier guitar playing, solid drumming by alex and another strong melodic performance, particularly on the hook. it's really the singing on saunders hollow that makes it a worthwhile album. more often than not, when you're dealing with this kind of music, it's the vocals that are going to make it good or not. if the melodies are flat or non-existent, it would be boring as hell to listen to. thankfully, that's not the case. the instrumentation is solid, too, and on a few occasions, it finds itself being the center of attention. the most noteworthy of those moments being the latter half of kept when the vocals are done and the band breaks into jam mode complete with a nice little saxophone action from darius jones, the only occurrence of the instrument that i spotted. it makes for a very nice, unexpected passage of music.

the liner notes feature some musings about tanakh by former 90's emo darling chris "feed me bread" leo (native nod, the van pelt...a bunch of others...). interesting. i didn't really get any of it, but i'm sure someone else will.

Where Our Gardens Grow