If there truly is a bottom to the wellspring of chordal arrangements, unique rhythms and uncharted melodies then there has to be a way to measure the limits of that depth. The last drops of a bottle of wine seem as good a place as any to mark where inspiration lets up and creativity kicks in. There’s an easy temptation to compare this project to a soused version of Simon and Garfunkel. The truth, however, only goes so far as to originate on a porch in Highland Park, artistic gears often well lubricated for two guys playing songs to the crossdresser on the left, the little girl on the right or the random Hasids passing by in the street. It was never really for the neighbors, nor one another, but only for themselves staving off depression and chasing down some reflective hope from the aforementioned well the two had so recklessly dropped their lives into. Honesty would posit the duo as a modern day Bergen and McCarthy with a handful of notes worked into their vaudeville rhetoric, one musician putting his songs into the world via some modified wood and a tart-tongued counterpart.
On better days, these so-called stoner folk songs pull off the inverse trick of clearing the heads of the songwriters. With luck, the listening recipients will recognize such clarity too, as the structures and hooks become more explicit with each listen. The ramshackle beauty in this record lives up to the title, reconciling that fine line between screwing up and buckling down. These are the songs playing ad infinitum in cramped, dingy rooms and dank basement apartments, the soundtrack to low rent, bad credit and stunted faith. The sounds of where most of us have lived and any of us might live again, our displaced homestead, those transitory quarters, those foreign capitols.
