In November 2014 American Sinner released their third studio album "Island of the Dolls". The title refers to "La Isla de las Muñecas" outside Mexico City, where a young girl drowned in a canal. Soon thereafter, the ferryman started hearing her tell him to bring her dolls. The island is now covered in dolls in various states of decay; a devotional monument to loss and the life that may persist after death. I haven't had the opportunity to listen to the new album until now. What can I say more than that I'm flabbergasted. This is, by far, their best album. The new album is nearly one hour long and contains 15 songs. With "Island of the Dolls" they take their music in a new direction. Their quite significant rock influence is somewhat grayed out and the sound has become more country-like, definitely softer and enigmatic. The songs on the album are darker than ever, while the vocals are more restrained compared to previous albums. I have the album in cd format, which is available through their website, click on the icon (bottom second from right). You can also buy the album digitally in the format of your choice at Bandcamp, just click on the icon (bottom left). I will now walk you through the whole album.  

The album starts with ”Goat Castle". The song is based on a true story of an aristocrat (Jennie Surget Merill) and her three wealthy friends in Natchez, Mississippi, who all became reclusive. Jennie was murdered in 1932 (the Goat Castle Murder). Maybe the motive fo the murder began with a dead goat (shot and killed after eating rose bushes). The mansion was filled with books, antiques and animal feces (animals walked around freely). The song is conciously or unconciously inspired by british progressive rock from the 1970s with several tempo shifts. Anyway, ”Goat Castle" is a perfect start of the album. The last verse reads: ”Felt like tasting heaven, when we danced too close to hell / Some seal, some bind was broken. The best I have to quell it are the songs and hanging pans / But things are still slipping by / And I still hear her singing, in the woods on quiet”. The second song ”What You Break” is rock-oriented and more in line with previous albums. The song title have multiple and quite different meanings. However, the song is the weakest on the album. It’s not a bad song, it's just that I'm definitely a country guy. The third song ”Maritana" starts quite tentative before the song begins to spread out. The song is based on the story of Thomas Rowe and Lucinda de Guzman. They met each other in the 1890s but were not allowed to marry. Lucinda died young. On her death bed, she wrote this to Thomas: ”…Time is infinite. I will wait for you by our fountain to share our timeless love, our destiny is time”. Thomas never forgot her and built the Don Cesar hotel (Don Cesar is a reference to when they met). The lobby of the hotel had a replica of the fountain where they used to meet. Of course, the hotel is haunted. The fourth song ”Lila Anne" is one of the best song on the album. The song deals with the anxiety of dying before your spouse and children are sufficiently taken care of. Most of the imagery are from a half-remembered poem about somebody traveling on a train with their deceased parent as cargo. The arrangements are perfect. You find yourself humming: "Remember me to anyone still there / Though I fade with each new year". The fifth song "You'll Need Somebody" cranks up the mood and tempo markedly. It's a good song placed somewhere between their rock ambitions and country expression. The next song is "Copper Queen" which also belongs to the best songs on the album. The beginning of the seventh song makes you rather confused. It sounds like a soundtrack of a touring circus. However, the song grows on you and have cerebral cortex-sticking qualities. The eight song "Hour" makes you think that you have put a Steely Dan-album in the cd tray by mistake. The song has namely all the typical Steely Dan qualities: causal, elaborated and well-produced at the same time. Anyway, its a great song.

The ninth song is "Gold" which begins with violin and banjo-picking. The song is about a friend who used to say “I was just born lucky” and thought he would strike it rich in Las Vegas, but instead he hung himself in a psychiatric ward. The second verse reads: ”But gold is always near / And the big wheels keep on spinning / You’re figuring someone’s got to win”. The next song on the album is "483", which is inspired of hundreds of graves around an old asylum in Athens, Ohio where many of them are marked only with a number. The refrain reads: "People and places with good souls / Must taste better.. to the demon folk / We were in love in the quiet in the dark / With your hands and your eyes you took me apart." The tenth song is "Bloodshed Blues" and is one of the few weaker songs on the album. The best song on the album is without any doubt ”Judgment Day”. The song begins with guitar, choir and firm vocals. The lyrics begin with "You have to be clean / As you stand on judgment day / In robes washed white by torrents of blood / As you stand on judgment day". Of course, this particular song make a favorable impression on me. The lyrics are brilliant. The third verse reads: "So bow down kneel and pray / As you stand on judgment day / There’s a winnowing sound as your body falls away / As you stand on judgment day". The thing that is crowning this song is the drumming. There are a number of ways of arranging the drums on this song. However, I would never have thought of this arrangement. It's highly innovative and works extremely well with its marching and almost scattered rhythm. The last verse reads: "It’s gonna rain blood, it’ll rain fire / As you stand on judgment day / A legion of souls all balanced all weighed / As you stand on judgment day". At the end of the song introspective backup vocals is performed by Kiki Troo. What can I say more than music doesn't get any better than this. The next song is "I'm Haunted By You", which is a little bland compared to other songs on the album. The fourteenth song breaks completely with the rest of the album. The album ends perfectly with a haunting and downscaled version of "Bright Smile" from their first album "Revival". The last song closes the circle. And finally, the overall assessment: This is a very solid album with well-crafted songs, sparse instrumentration, well-balanced vocals and worked-through arrangements. The album is fully coherent from a thematic point of view apart from the next to last song. But, this is a peripheral remark. The new direction for American Sinner is definitely the right direction. 

If you click on the icons below they will open in a new window, from left to right: American Sinner's Bandcamp page, American Sinner's Facebook page", American Sinner's homepage and Lyrics and the background of the songs.

Everyone in Australia doesn't surf or work as a life guard. In fact, some of them play the hardest doom blues you will ever come across. I'm referring to T.K. Bollinger from Melbourne. The music of T.K. Bollinger has an unmistakable gothic streak over it, which makes it eligble for this "gothic country" site. Doom from Down Under, is that conceivable? Of course it's conceivable. “Gothic country” and its genre cousins thrives in all time and climate zones, so also in the Southern Hemisphere. T.K. Bollinger is labeled "sadcore" (a branch of "slowcore"). It's a jumble without precedent anyway. T.K. Bollinger has been an important part of the Melbourne underground scene for over 25 years and the discography is impressing. Some of the albums are available on Bandcamp. On his equally tasteful and informative website you can read about his long and winding road along musical projects, names and constellations. The latest project is T.K. Bollinger & That Sinking Feeling. The band consists (naturally) of T.K. Bollinger (vocals and guitar), R.S. Amor (bass and engineering) and Vis Ortis (drums). A caveat is in place. The music is dark and depressing located in the absolute outskirts of what this website deals with. However, I like it.  

When you're steadily rooted in the doom genre you expose yourself for a considerable risk of mannerism, overplay and theatricality. But the doom and the gloom is here balanced with a considerable proportion of fragility. T.K. Bollinger's latest album "A Catalogue of Woe" took three years to complete and was released in August 2014. It's literally pitch-black. The album cover is in fact so dark that I had to adjust the brightness of the album image (see right) so it would be possible to distinguish the motif. The music is even darker, but not beyond what you can take with a normal emotional setup. The album contains nine songs. The song titles are witty and ironic. You would expect a title that starts with "That which does not kill me..." to be followed by "makes me stronger", but instead it's followed by "gives me cancer". Another example is "Tortured by a Racialised Folk Devil". The best songs on the album are "Betting On Your Dying Day", "Tortured by a Racialised Folk Devil", "Rich Man's Heaven", "That Which Does Not Kill Me Gives Me Cancer", "Wearing Down My Devotion", "Fools Walk Were Logic Fear To Tread" and "Were You There When They Crucified My Love". The album moves between extremes. In some songs they almost goes beserk (where they remind me of Neil Young's band Crazy Horse in their messiest and loudest moments) while other songs have a more delicate and restrained expression. On these latter songs, the vocals of T.K. Bollinger are more heartfelt. The album "A Catalogue of Woe" is (besides digitally) released as a limited edition cd and as a limited edition cd including a book with illustrations. Both editions are very affordable. You can listen to the album and buy it (bottom left).   

If you click on the icons below they will open in a new window, from left to right: T.K. Bollinger's Bandcamp page, T.K. Bollinger's Facebook page, T.K. Bollinger's homepage and T.K. Bollinger's Myspace page.

Quotes, quotes and quotes. Quotes are everywhere and hard to avoid. They even pop up in the electronic invoice system at my workplace. Their purpose seems to be to light up the day with both inspirational and sprightly exclamations and share thoughtful life wisdoms. Unfortunately, they have the opposite effect on me since I tend to get annoyed with sententious drivel. If I can understand them. Sometimes the quotes are completely incomprehensible. Of course, there are quotes and there are quotes. Very few quotes reach the standards of Oscar Wilde (the true master of sardonic one-liners). However, I'm very amused by the quotes within in the "gothic country" genre. They were never meant to be quotes and are just "cut out" as quotes by yours truly. A quote requires some universal insights. The injustices in the "gothic country" genre are numerous, extensive and outrageous so there's no lack of topics to extract quotes from. The "cut out" quotes are often self-ironic and sarcastic and contain a large dose grim humour, but are for some reason never bitter. Soldiering on no matter what. For this, the artists and the bands have my unreserved respect. Here are the top ten quotes. 

1. "Let’s be honest: this type of music is an acquired taste"– Christian Williams (about the limited interest in gothic country from major record labels)

2. "I find it easiest to write what I know about. Religion is king where I grew up... I'm never left without source material." - Zebulon Whatley (about the source of his creative output)

3. “Musicians are generally pretty terrible people” – Slackeye Slim a.k.a Joe Frankland (about the difficulties finding musicians to work with)

4. "Social media ain't country" – American Sinner (about their social media strategies and activities)

5. "A typical Reverend Glasseye show is typical only in that it's fairly atypical" - Reverend Glasseye (about their live performances)

6. ”All of the hiss, noise and defects from the original recordings have been retained for your listening displeasure.” – Lonesome Wyatt (from the liner notes on the triple-cd Moldy Basement Tapes)

7. "I pick the songs and adjust them for my needs, trying to hammer them into a shape where I can sing them without being phony or a wanna be.” - Uncle Sinner (describing his working methods)

8. ”I see that in the scene are some pretenders who are "so daaaark" and others who appear to be very truthful in their expressions.” – Dad Horse Ottn (about the future for artists/bands in the gothic country genre”)

9. "There are two kinds of gigs. Normal gigs and weird gigs, I hate normal gigs.” – Reverend Elvis and the Undead Syncopators (about their live performances)

10. "What’s the difference between a musician and a large pizza? A large pizza can support a family” – Josh T. Pearson (about being a struggling musician)

A take refers to successive attempts to record a song. The concept comes from the need to obtain a complete and at the same time acceptable take, which was especially important in the years predating multi-track recording and dubbing techniques. Musical takes were numbered sequentially. An alternate take refers to different versions of the same song from a single recording session. After the introduction of multi-track recording it's no longer necessary to obtain a complete single take. You can patch it up afterwards. With digital recording, you can refine or pervert the recording in infinite ways. Nowadays, an alternate take often refers to a demo or experimental version before the artists decides what shape and form the song should have and how it will be finalized. It's often very fascinating and instructive to listen to earlier versions and compare it with the original song. The original version is almost never outshined by an alternate take. However, it's the exception that proves the rule. In the rock music genre one such example is the demo version of "Candidate" recorded on New Year's Day 1974 by David Bowie (a.k.a. "Candidate 1" and "Alternative Candidate"). The original version of "Candidate" was released on the album Diamond Dogs the same year. The demo song was released as a bonus track on Rykodisc (RCD 10137). It's very elaborated for a demo. The versions are very different musically and lyrically. The demo version have only one line and a title in common with the original “Candidate”. The demo version is 5,05 minutes long, while the original version is only 2,40 minutes. Anyway, the demo version wipes the floor with the original version.

This phenomenon also exists within the "gothic country" genre. There are no shortage of candidates. The obvious choice is the early version of ”Cora” by Christian Williams (recorded in May 2006 and digitally released on "The Long Winter B-sides and Alternate Takes in September 2008). The original version of "Cora" was released in September 2008 on the debut album "For My Mind, It Was Flying". The song has the same rhythm and structure in both versions. However, there are important differences. The original version is catchy and upbeat, banjo-driven and ends with a fade-out. The song is 2:32 minutes long. The alternate take is slow and subdued, guitar-based and ends with a plucking chord. The song is 3:32 minutes long. You can listen to the two versions below and compare them. In which aspects does the alternate take outshine the original version? An answer would be that the original version is bad, but this is not really the case here, on the contrary. The alternate take is just as good as it gets. This version is made up by a perfect interplay between dark baritone vocals and restrained guitar strumming. The philosophical and thoughtful lyrics also becomes more prominent in this early version compared with the original version. The harmony sways and floats throughout the song. But, the attribute that is crowning this song, besides the vocals, is the simple but beautiful guitar strumming after the fourth and sixth (and last) verse. In my opinion, the sound board of a Martin guitar have never amplified a more deep and full-bodied sound. "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". There is nothing to take away here. Of course, there's nothing to add or alter either.  

Here are the lyrics of “Cora” in its entirety: One mornin' 'bout the break of day/ I heard my loving pappy say/ By the Lord above this old oak tree/ Don't let me rest in no six-by-three/ No matter what your momma thinks/ I won't be bound by no chain link/ And when it's time for soul to die/ I want my ashes to fill the sky/ You can spill me from a moving train/ Or let me fall from an aeroplane/ However you do it, I don't care/ Just promise me I'll be in the air/ My eyes'll see New York's skyline/ While my legs stretch past the Great Divide/ My ears'll hear Congress debate/ while what counts is already in the Pearly Gates/ I asked, What of the preacher man/who says that we belong in the land?/ Ashes to ashes and all that stuff/ that we gotta go back to where we came from? / He said, The way I see it my curious son/ in heaven this old body won't serve no one/ If all I need is my heart and soul/ why not let these old bones circle the globe?

Cora (original version)

Cora (alternate take)

Annus Horribilis is here. This is namely the year the cd really died. It was just apparantely dead before. The death cause was unnatural death induced by a combination of new technology and a change in consumer demand. However, CD sales peaked worldwide already in 2000 and it has been a very long and painful death struggle. An inevitable gasp, wheeze and death twitch could be noticed last year. This was particularly noticeable in Sweden, a country full of anxious early adopters, and supported by sales statistics. In 2014 3 895 000 cd albums were sold in Sweden. That means 0,4 cd albums per capita. I bought 133 cd albums in 2014 (I admit, this was a poor year). In 2013 and 2012 the sales figures were 5 795 000 and 8 440 000 respectively. In 2000 as much as 23 838 000 cd albums were sold. The interesting thing isn't the sales decline in itself, but the pattern the last three years. You would since 2000 expect some large shifts in sales and then a proportional decline. You would also expect smaller and smaller decreases, when you reach the segments of hard core buyers like myself. But this is not the case, on the contrary. Calculated as percentage change versus previous year, the drop in sales has actually increased the last three years, despite lower and lower absolute sales levels. The change in sales is -15 percent 2012, -31 percent 2013 and -33 percent 2014 (!). I'm a full-blown reactionist when it comes to formats, but I have reluctantly come to accept that the cd format is dead. However, I'm not going to change format. The master plan, until now, has been to buy uncompressed physical files and then burn them on long-lasting and high-quality cd-r. I have to force myself back to the drawing board again, since digital sales also is dropping rapidly but have now stabilized. The change in sales is -25 percent 2012, -23 percent 2013 and 3 percent 2014 (!). The revenues from digital downloads now accounts for less than five percent of total sales. Who knows how long uncompressed digital downloads will be available for sale until streaming takes over completely. Let me for the sake of clarity declare: I hate streaming very deep and intensely, especially Spotify. Ugliest music streaming service I ever seen, no fair reimbursement to the artists and the sound quality is terrible. I don't know what I will do when there's only streaming left. In worst case scenario, I will decelerate and only listen to music that has been released in cd format and join a group of cd death conspiracy theorists. CD is a highly slandered format. In my opinion, it's a practical format by which you can to listen to an album in its entirety without any break (just as the artist intended) with adequate sound quality (most important no scratches or hissing). Annus Horribilis is here. If you want peace, prepare for war.