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Hush Arbors- "Yankee Reality"
Out Oct. 6th (US) Oct. 12th (UK & Europe) on Ecstatic Peace!
"When Keith played me Yankee Reality I knew it was not only the best Hush Arbors album, but also that Keith’s work had entered an entirely new world bursting with hauntings.
This is a classic, timeless, ageless American album, full of hope and yearning, beauty and melancholy, and which pours out stories like flowers. Are these rainbow-at-end-of-the-world songs? Or heart’s break/heart’s ease-at-the-end-of-the-road songs? Anyway, I thought of horses and acid, death sleeping in a shack, the river bursting its banks and grinning like whisky, the birdlight and fading empires. Starry, dreamlike, plaintive, gorgeous and broken, Yankee Reality is a perfect and utterly individual work, endlessly inventive yet instantly recognizable as being in a noble and generous tradition.
Yankee Reality sends shivers through my body when I listen to it. I don’t know where to start, because I don’t know where it ends. A circular masterpiece effortlessly stationed between the sea, the sun and the moon."
David Tibet/Anok Pe/Current 93, August 25, 2009
"Yankee Reality continues Wood’s winning streak while introducing an embarrassment of riches in the way of surprises and curveballs along the way. “Day Before,” featuring J Mascis’s unmistakable lead guitar, immediately elevates this triumphant opening number to ‘classic Hush” status.
Next up is “Lisbon,” a bouncy, folk rock number reminiscent of the Byrds, punctuated by a searing solo. “Fast Asleep” is a distended, plaintive dirge that evokes wooziness and wispiness over a stoned guitar drone. “So They Say” picks up where “Fast Asleep” leaves off, a languid tune built around slo-mo guitar drenched in reverb and Wood’s gentle voice. “One Way Ticket” is up next and one of the most adventurous Hush Arbors songs since dude started singing actual words. Built on a wonderfully apprehensive-sounding piano line and druggy atmosphere.As for “Coming Home” – well, that one’s another curveball.
Easily one of the finest songs Wood has written to date, this beautifully arranged number features a gorgeous strings-approximating mellotron every time the song radically changes gears from two step country / Creedence boogie to its out-of-nowhere chorus, which oughta have the girls in Band of Horses t-shirts swooning in no time. If “So They Say” is Wood’s take on the Velvet’s third album, surely “Sun Shall” is his “Venus in Furs,” compete with a propulsive, insistent Moe Tucker beat (provided by Mascis) and ominous ostrich guitar jangle. “Take It Easy” may be the album’s best track. On this easy, breezy country number, Wood plays it relatively straight, owning up to his hillbilly roots and mixing ‘em up with more than a little Norman Greenbaum “For While You Slept,” again featuring Mascis, quotes Petty’s “American Girl” before lifting off into what could only be considered a wedding song – if the reception was held at Roswell City Hall.
Just when you think Wood’s mellowed out too much, “Devil Made You High” ends things on a serious art-punk tip. From the sounds of it, Wood probably agrees with me that The Smiths were best when they tried to rock out – “Shakespeare’s Sister,” “London,” Handsome Devil” – those were the jams! Yeah, so the albums ends with this unabashed garage pop tune which, by the conclusion, has gone totally off the rails, like the boys are trying to give Kawabata a run for his money.
Maybe you were expecting something else from an album that thanks a wood chopper ghost in the liner notes and is dedicated to Link Wray? “Ride the tubes back home,” indeed."
-James Jackson Toth
Nashville, TN
August 2009
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