{"id":592,"date":"2011-09-05T05:12:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T10:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=592"},"modified":"2011-09-05T05:12:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T10:12:45","slug":"album-review-warm-in-the-wake-american-prehistoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/05\/album-review-warm-in-the-wake-american-prehistoric\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Review: Warm in the Wake – American Prehistoric"},"content":{"rendered":"

File this one under Music You Probably Missed<\/strong>. This album found its way onto my desk in 2007 (pre-blog and pre-musoscribe.com<\/a> days), and I reviewed it for a print magazine. Few people heard the album; fewer still read the review. I did in fact have the pleasure of seeing this group onstage not long thereafter, and their vaguely shoegaze-y approach suited the music perfectly. They did release a followup that — while good — did not match the heights reached here. Seemingly they are no more; the most recent (fan) post on their Facebook page dates from June 2010, and while it does suggest a live show around that time, no additional info was\/is available. Anyway, this album is well worth seeking out. — bk<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"warm_in_the_wake\"If there’s a useful musical reference point for this Atlanta-based group, it might be Scotland’s Teenage Fanclu<\/strong>b. Warm in the Wake<\/strong> utilizes the gauzy Third\/Sister Lovers<\/em>-era Big Star<\/strong> vibe on a number of songs, most notably “Joseph Campbell.” (Extra points are awarded for having the moxie to name-check the mythologist.) Some of American Prehistoric<\/em>‘s guitar squeals evoke Brian Eno<\/strong>‘s mid 70s work (not to mention his Achtung Baby<\/em> production work for U2<\/strong>).The vocal harmonies on “She’d Never Seen It” call to mind a hipper version of CSN <\/strong>backing Thom Yorke<\/strong>, or some equally unlikely pairing. The songs chug along with wonderful analog synth washes propelling the sound an inch or two toward space-rock territory. For its final minute, “Dark Gypsy Moth” executes a stunning and beautiful musical left-turn.The jazzy arrangement of “Airport Girl” — maybe the strongest track on a near-flawless album — comes as a surprise too, on the heels of the title track’s fairly mainstream excursion. Subtle yet effective piano and (synth) strings from Dan Barker<\/strong> show that keyboard can be effectively worked into a rock aesthetic without going all 80s-trash-synth on the listener. The drums move things forward while setting out a pitter-pat approach that adds to the songs without exactly rocking out. Subtle stuff; it would be really interesting to see how these guys pull these songs off in a live setting.<\/p>\n

Docked a half-star for a very slight sameness that creeps up toward the album’s end, American Prehistoric<\/em> still easily makes my short list of best albums of 2007.<\/p>\n

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Disclosure of Material Connection:
\n\"I<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

File this one under Music You Probably Missed. This album found its way onto my desk in 2007 (pre-blog and pre-musoscribe.com days), and I reviewed it for a print magazine. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}