This fragile solo album of exquisite melancholy from the Brooklyn-based Okkervil River guitarist was written and recorded after a devastating breakup during Covid lockdown and echoes the sensitivity of Elliott Smith. Very much of a similar slow pace throughout, the stillness of the music, written when retreated back to Graefe’s house in Massachusetts, is full of deep gnawing sadness, but it comes in different hues, and while it’s a record in which it’s hard not to feel self-pity, there are many moments of new perspective, even green shoots of hope appearing. Opening track Almost Morning, inspired no doubt by the culmination of a sleepless night, shows how this process ends up, as it is the last to be written and recorded, and as Graefe says: “It’s about processing loss and reckoning with one's memory. It's also a simple plea for strength. The guitar solo is influenced by the sound of early Brian Eno and the unbridled spirit of Sonny Sharrock.” Coral Court Motel is very much a centrepiece number, lyrics identifying same room where he always stays giving a sense of mental health place to contemplate isolation, and perhaps also inspiring the album’s cover where the hotel pool is shown to be completely drained empty. There’s no lonelier place than an empty hotel. It’s described as “a psychological song about resignation, infidelity, insanity.” Equally slow and beautiful, it includes ghostly backing harmonies by Katie Von Schleicher, emanating the sense of another presence hovering over his solitude. The midway point number (Bathing Griever) is also spooky instrumental of rainfall and country guitar that is otherworldly and rather wonderful. Two of the most exquisite of the other tracks are All The Ways (“I said I love you … to hear you, nothing in the world could stop you”) combining simple guitar and that Elliott Smith softness of vocals, Honey Boy and the last ditch attempt at hope – Run To You. All deeply sad and full of hurt, but an album that manages, cathartically, to work through the pain. Out on 11A Records.
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