re: The MB Album Listening Project

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It’s been a good year for the friends of Kurt Vile. Adam Granduciel’s latest album as the War on Drugs is one of the year’s standouts, and now Steve Gunn , formerly one of Vile’s Violators, has released something very nearly as good. Where War on Drugs play cosmic MOR, Gunn goes for a kind of cosmic Americana. The melodies seemed soaked in a timeless well of American music: the album feels both new and familiar at the same time, every song a clever layering of Gunn’s guitars – acoustic, electric, steel, and assorted effects pedals, but all separated clearly, so there’s no hint of sonic mush. Gunn’s voice is perfect, too: a little enervated, dazed, but smoky and engaged. There’s also a perfect and dramatic change of pace and tone for the album’s closing track: Tommy’s Congo strips out the Americana and ups the cosmic, taking a West African-inspired guitar line and extending it into a blissful drone that out-Goats Goat.

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