Regular readers of this blog will know that I've become quite a fan of Chicago's Teen River label. They offer good music, good design, and have an open-minded creative zest for life. Two tapes that found their way to me from this windy city scene couldn't be more different. One is intimate and steeped in the archaic, while the other is ragged, raw, and rough. Julie Byrne's sound is not current, let's just state that up front. This songstress is dealing pre-Dylan-electric Greenwich Village folk music. Acoustic guitar, gently plucked with haunting vocals crooning above all that is delicate, I could almost be convinced this album is an artifact from a ghost of hootenanny's past. The album opens with keyboards, but that is a misdirection because basically Byrne's a dark shadows romantic folk-poetess. If this is your bag, get in it. Conversely, sounding like Joy Division (with their analog dragged behind a pick-up truck), King Tut's Tomb is overdriven Casio, but not "rock" music. Nothing on this is all that amazing in the SONG category, but it doesn't disappoint and I can't quite turn it off. There's something claustrophobic and mushy about the band's sound on Infotrash and I think I should listen to it again.
Keep on Ragin'!
Buy and Listen HERE.
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