Jana Hunter - Carrion

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3...according to our Brian on Thu 13 Sep, 2007.

Jana Hunter is one of that Devendra Banhart's crew and she has an LP/CD out called 'Carrion'. Really, I find this yank-psych-folk thing often very dreary & I must profess a slight weary dislike for this album. It's the affectation of the voice. (it's in the same style as Coconutrosie, Antony Johnson (sic) & all the other fake pixie angst backslappers) Almost a mournful sobbing hiccup of a thing, the music is sparse & almost funereally plodding in parts. Y'see I do actually like some simplistic contemporary folk music, but feel like this particular scene is so self reverential it almost verges on the embarrasing. I'd so much rather swoon to the gothic drama of Nina Nastasia or Shannon Wright than this campfire yawn-a-thon, although there are some really pretty touches within it's simple chord changes...but that bloody voice....oh get me earmuffs quick you fool!

***Half of the six songs on Jana Hunter's Carrion are unreleased hangers-on from the writing sessions that produced her most recent full-length, There's No Home, while the other half are alternate renditions of works that appeared on that release. But this is no mere grab bag of remnants; it's a real tight product, all around.

"Paint A Babe" is a throw-back to Hunter's earlier material, written and recorded simultaneously on a borrowed four-track recorder. A real sad, longing song. "A Goblin, A Goblin" took a little more time to create: this strong, sturdy number, replete with violins and creepy harmony, tells the tale of an indignant outcast. "You Will Take It and Like It," turns one central, pretty and proud guitar part over and over and over, with others mirroring it, leeching from it, grabbing on like little parasitic danglers. The original version of "There's No Home" is here, the track that spawned an entire record title, followed by "Sleep" (titled, as it was originally, "Ooh Uuh"), from the recording that ended up on a lullaby compilation. Concluding Carrion is an acoustic re-presentation of the country-minded "Oracle," stripped down to one guitar, one melody, and one harmony, as it was originally conceived in its creation as homage.

"[O]ne of the best and most underrated luminaries on the neo-folk scene, Hunter ... toured the east coast ... [in the] summer [of 2006] by sailboat. Her meditative, playful, sparse, acoustic-driven songs are refreshing, somber, and sometimes eerie.... [T]he most excellent There's No Home ... finds Jana exploring ever so slightly poppier tunes." --Shawn Bosler, Village Voice

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