Charalambides

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5...according to our Phil on Thu 29 Sep, 2011.

Ace! A new Charalambides CD! Five years in the making this baby has been. Considering a human child takes 9 months to be born from conception you'd expect this to be good and on first listen I can confirm that is the case. The core duo of Tom & Chrstina Carter are aided and abetted by Helena Espvall and Margarida Garcia who provide a string section on one track. The rest of the album sees the usual American folk and blues inspired guitars of Tom blended with the ghostly ethereal vocals of Christina. This works together amazingly well and their unique brand of psych blues/folk continues to be nothing but haunting. The guitars widdle pretty much from start to end so if you're not into widdly guitars then you're probably going to want to stop reading now! The vocals make it for me as Christina's voice drifts over the arrangements with spectral aplomb (I can't believe I just wrote that). The production is more hi-fi than previous releases but being they've been going for 20 years now you'll allow them some grace. Some of the songs are very sparse indeed and for me those songs work the best. The whole less-is-more approach tends to work best for me but anyone with an interest in U.S. folk and blues should really check these guys out if you've not already and this is as good a place to start as any.

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* Exile is the new Charalambides album. Five years in the making, it was recorded between 2006 and 2010 in various locations in New Hampshire, western Massachusetts and New York City, mixed at Black Dirt Studios, and mastered at Sand with Paul Gold. The group remains the core duo of Christina and Tom Carter, with contributions on one track by the string section of Helena Espvall and Margarida Garcia.

* Deeply imbued with the full historical spectrum of american folk and blues song form, Exile is a tapestry of suppliant invocations directed at the heart of the unseen spiritual forces surrounding us. Dense arrangements and thickly-overdubbed tracks sit side-by-side with material that ranks among the sparest and most skeletal the group has recorded, giving Exile the psychic scope of their classic Market Square album while building on the re?nements of the more recent Likeness and A Vintage Burden releases.

*This album quite coincidentally marks Charalambides' 20th anniversary, as it was the fall of 1991 when they ?rst started playing, and they made their live debut in December of that year. Since their last album, Tom Carter has released a series of collaborations and solo works on a wide array of labels, while Christina Carter has been steadily releasing her solo work through labels including her own Many Breaths imprint.

Tracklisting:

1.Autumn Leaves 2. Desecrated 3. Words Inside 4. Immovable 5. Before You Go 6. Into the Earth 7. Wanted to Talk 8. Pity Pity Me 9. Rider* 10. Down in the Valley* *LP only bonus tracks

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