Review: The Welcome Wagon - Welcome to the Welcome Wagon

The Welcome Wagon are husband and wife duo The Rev. Vito Aiuto and Mrs. Monique Aiuto…that’s right, a pastor and his wife….wait….no wait….come back!  It has to be said that when I have been recommending this album around –  and I have been, to practically everyone I meet – the fact that it is an American album of religious and quasi-religious folk tracks sung by a pastor and his wife has not been an easy sell.  However, see past such fripperies, and there is a fantastic album to be enjoyed.

WTTWW is produced by Sufjan Stevens, who also adds many of the instrumental elements to the album, and released it on his Asthmatic Kitty imprint.  Stevens will be a name well known to anyone with half an interest in the US independent music scene, a veritable folk titan who, amongst writing albums that deal with the Chinese Zodiac and his Christianity, has often spoken of his desire to write an album about every state in the US (so far, only the superb ‘Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lake State’ and ‘Come on Feel the Illinoise’ are extant).  

Stevens’ albums are full of lush orchestration hung around songs and lyrics which feel at the same time both intensely personal and utterly universal.  It is easy to see why SS band member Vito would have jumped at the chance to have such expertise available on production duties.  With Stevens’ presence, however, there is a danger that this album will come across as just another of his many musical side-projects.  Happily,  this is not the case.  Whilst some songs could indeed come straight from his Illionoise off-cuts album ‘The Avalanche’ (notably ‘Sold! To The Rich Man’) he sensibly allows Vito’s songwriting skills more than enough room to speak for themselves.

 

Highlights include delicate covers of the Smiths’ ‘Half a Person’ and ‘Jesus’ by the Velvet Underground, as well as the beautiful album-opener, ‘Up on a Mountain’.  Sung by Monique, it gently lulls you into the right frame of mind to enjoy the rest of what is a wonderful album.  

It would be churlish, however, to try and split tracks from one another.  This cd works best approached as a whole; imagine yourself amongst the youthful population of Vito’s church on a Sunday afternoon, alternately clapping along and listening as the Pastor offers up the fruits of his faith.  Or imagine yourself sat round a campfire in the summer - marshmallows, beer and a guitar.  Any way you imagine it, it's escapism par excellence...

Review: Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes will probably be a name that rings a few bells, three-sheeted, as they have been, all over poster boards and TV/Radio of late.  Winning a place in most critics’ ‘Albums of 2008’ lists, and selling more than 100,000 cds in the UK whilst doing it, you don't seem to be able to get away from these Seattle boys...

Why the delay in writing about them then?  Sadly, they are a band I have always ‘not quite got round to’.  Thankfully, iTunes’ albums for under £5 sale was the remedy to this and, in the midst of a whole wealth of soundtrack purchases (‘Batman’, ‘American Beauty’, ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’, and ‘Blade Runner’), there was the album -  just waiting to be bought...and am I ever glad I did!

First, a bit of background.  Hailing from Seattle, the Foxes are a five-piece outfit that create, in their own words 'baroque harmonic pop jams'.  Originally going under the forgettable moniker of 'Pineapple', they switched to their more evocative current handle after a name clash with another local band (thank God...Pineapple?!)  The band were formed in 2006 and, building on positive word of mouth reviews as well as strong reactions from the Seattle music press, they released a number of well-received EPs in 06-07, before releasing their eponimous album in June of '08.

The album itself has echoes of Brian Wilson’s magnum opus ‘Smile’.  However, where Wilson’s work had its heart in the surf of California and Hawaii, Fleet Foxes evoke a feel far to the East of their Seattle home; the bluegrass and soft country of Appalachians.  ‘Sun Rises’, the first track on the album, could quite easily be straight out of the soundtrack to ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’, and there are nods to the likes of Old Crow Medicine Show and Chatham County Line.  It would be a mistake, however, to simply file this under 'country' or 'bluegrass'.  There is a country feel, certainly, but there is also folk, baroque, pop, and even shades of the irregular time signatures and sea-shanty guitar lines that indie math kids Hot Club de Paris have made their own.  

Although uniformly superb, when the album is at its best is in its transitions between the delicate and the expansive.  At one second, lead singer Robin Pecknold’s hushed tones interplay with a single guitar; the next, a full orchestra comes crashing in and the chord progression just soars.  Nowhere is this better seen than in the album's standout track 'Blue Ridge Mountains' - a piece which fights it out with Elbow’s ‘Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver’ as the most evocative, achingly beautiful piece of music this reviewer heard last year or this.  

>

At only 39 minutes, the album should feel short, but in fact the minimal playing time only serves to accentuate how perfectly formed the collection is.  Besides, you'll want to skip straight back to the start and play it all over again anyway, so we're really talking about 1hr20, and I honestly can't think of many better ways to spend an hour and a half.  Stunning.