Artist: The Space Between Things
Album: self-titled
It's been — yikes — over a year since I ran an album review, which hasn't been out of a lack of interest or material. Obviously I can't even keep close to staying up-to-date on the live write-ups, so there's just no time on top of that for more. And, anyways, album reviews are plentiful and easy to find, and there's just not as much of a opinion void to fill there.
A quick exception, then, for this release, passed along by friend-of-MFS Chris Hobson, who I first encountered on stage last year. This rigourously solo project has a different feel to it, but it's good stuff. Opener "Solitary Man" hints at Guided by Voices (without the free-association lyrical drift) and may be the jauntiest thing here. "Ginger Snap" brings Sebadoh to mind while "Don't Care That Much" has hints of Yo La Tengo — which is pretty good company to aspire to. Those names should provide a sense of the sonic terrain here — a low-slung, slightly spare sound with fuzzy bass and whispery guitar, recorded in appealing mid-fi — a classic bedroom four-track sound, intimate like a demo but with plenty of intriguing sonic details around the edges. It's not a masterpiece ("New Years Ever" gets a little yelpy for me, and the drum machine is a bit harshly tinny in some spots) and it's not one for every day and every mood, but recommended for those times when you feel a withdrawn solipsism descend upon you.
If I were going to paint a word picture of the emotions that this album suggests to me, it'd be something like this: imagine a winter morning. You have to get up early and go to work and it's still dark outside. Yesterday's coffee is still on the table, creamcongealed into an unpleasant browngrey smear. A silent house where even your own breath seems absent and you don't want to think about the past and you don't want to think about regret and you don't want to step out into the cold. The space between things takes up a good chunk of most anyone's life. We'd like to imagine there isn't so much of it, but at the quantum level, that's what most of everything is, right? Some days you go to lean on a table and just hope that it's going to be solid by the time your arm hits it.
Chris Hobson has spent some time thinking about how to share his music in these times, and has decided, for the time being, to give this album away as a free download, which you can grab here. It's more than worth it.
Track Picks: "Solitary Man", "Ginger Snap", "Twins"
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