Music Reviews

The Double U

White Night, Floating Anchor

Emperor Jones

Messed up lo-fi indie meets Tom Waits and Balkan single-line melodies to create a surprisingly thoughtful ride through subdued weirdness and murky carnival folk. From the murder ballad “Suit Made From the Shadow of a Crow” to the Lambchop-gone-awry “Rooster in the Moss” and the 1960s instrumental guitar lullaby “Companion,” The Double U revel in taking unsuspected turns while all the same defining a sound of their own. “Valuable Duck Floats Through the Lily Pond” may bring to mind a circus-folk version of Tindersticks, while “Bubbling Cactus Water” is a great instrumental slab of folk noir, but it all seems to hang together and to rise from the same basic idea – lo-fi gypsy punk drunk on hard liquor. White Night, Floating Anchor is probably too plain weird for its own good, but worth checking out for those who think Tom Waits needs to do an album or two with The Bad Seeds.

Emperor Jones Records: http://www.emperorjones.com


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