Track Listing
1. Let You Down
2. Porchlight
3. Simplify
4. Et Tu Kitte?
5. Rustic Stairs
6. Sleeping on the Ground
7. Courtyard Waltz
8. Patterns Shape the Mile
9. Arun
10. New Evil, The
11. Baby Your a Dead Man
12. Do What You're Told
| Details | | Producer: | Brian Paulson, Jerry Kee | | Distributor: | Alternative Dis. Alliance | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
The Kingsbury Manx includes: Jerry Kee (pedal steel guitar); Steve Norfleet (flute).
Recorded at Sound Of Music, Richmond, Virginia and Duck Kee Studios, Mebane, North Carolina between December 2000 and May 2001.
This Chapel Hill, NC quartet's second album continues to seamlessly meld progressive and folkish inclinations into a beautifully impressionistic landscape. While the band embraces a pastoral grace, they never stoop to mere prettiness--there's a haunting air of melancholy and darkness whispering from behind every tree. There's a hefty dose of hypnotic psychedelia flying through the songs, but this is built over a foundation of relatively simple, almost-folk songs. The soothing simplicity of the music belies intricately crafted arrangements.
The band's soft but confidently articulated harmony vocals have the evocative smoothness of a marble statue covered with vines. Even the guitars feel like they're breathing in unison with the singing. Songs like "Porchlight," "Simplify," and "Rustic Stairs" are built around vibrato guitar parts, but all the instruments are playing along to the same pulse, even without the vibrato effect. This creates a wondrous effect that shimmers like streetlights through a rain-spattered windshield. In short, this is gorgeous music.
Editorial Reviews
3 stars out of 5 - ...LET YOU DOWN drifts along slowly, quietly, and with a lot of sleep in its eyes...
Uncut (11/01/2001)
7 out of 10 - ...These fresh-faced North Carolina boys spin a loping, luminous blend of gentle folk and indie rock....LET YOU DOWN is a mood record, well-blended and consistent...
Alternative Press (01/01/2002)
...Slow and gorgeous folk songs that sound as natural as breathing...
Magnet (12/01/2002)
...While clamping down on some of their more anaemic meanderings and calling time on the King's Singers-style a cappella inetrludes, producer Brian Paulson has left the band's melodious care more or less unaltered...
Mojo (09/01/2001)
4 stars out of 5 - ...Their sleepily cyclical guitar lines and heavy-lidded harmonies invoke the sun-dappled likes of early '70s Pink Floyd or Kevin Ayers...
Q (10/01/2001)
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