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***Brightblack goes well with ghostly, bow-legged travels in a cheap old pick-up truck. Songwriter Nathan D. Shineywater is in fact bow-legged and drives an old pick-up truck. Rachael Hughes, whose haunty whispers add a great harmony on every song, plays Rhodes and acoustic piano. The instrumentation on Ala.cali.tucky complements plush canyon vocals. Paul Oldham engineered and helped produce some of the songs. He also played the bass guitar. Brother Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy, Palace) even stopped by one day to sing a high harmony. Every song on Ala.cali.tucky has a floaty quality that never becomes tiresome. These are songs to travel by. The title of the album refers to the process of how the recording took place: the songs were written in Alabama and California (and rehearsed in an old wood barn on a friend's ranch) and recorded in Kentucky (one song per day). Claimed influences range from My Bloody Valentine to the Grateful Dead's early records, but who knows what Alabamans really listen to? "The songs were written by a rural person about rural decisions," snaggles Shineywater, "while being high on reefer or just spent on this tired system we all live in." Does that sound MBV-meets-the-Dead enough for you? The music is as friendly as it is stony, full-to-thebrim of Southern drawl charm. From the opening track "New Mexico," the marijuana smoke rolls out the truck cab window following the drift of the pedal steel guitar. It's not as lazy as it is easy-going. Later in the record, "Old Letters," a little Willie Nelsonesque camp-fire ballad, remembers a friend. Brightblack has opened for and/or toured with Will Oldham, Papa M, and Rachel's. |
