Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible Album Alert !, 22 Jan 2008
UNCUT ****
Sparsely arranged, slyly intelligent country-folk stuffed with juniper winds, Juarez jails and long women in short dresses, delivered with all the gruff urgency of Tom Waits over lap steel and ruptured guitar.
For his 2005 debut Nels harnessed the sounds of the desert; here on Off Track Betting he's kept that basic sound but tampered with it somewhat by adding some odd instruments and assorted percussion . These changes are probably in part due to his recent move to NYC and the addition of a known producer in Todd Sickafoose. The new sounds mimic some of what you might hear in a busy city so that makes sense.
Nels Andrews - "The last couple years for me have been a life in the margins, sleeping on floors and in parking lots, slipping in and out of bars and coffee shops in towns that barely knew I was there. I'd lived this marginal life before, in my early twenties, chasing Kerouac down the road, working itinerant jobs in the canneries of Alaska and planting trees in the forests of South Dakota. In this way, my past laid the road before me, easing the transition from the between years, when I was deep-rooted in the desert, to the well-worn boots of a troubadour, the one's I've been wearing lately. I've found a romantic optimism that comes from distance, and saw it in the Off Track Betting house downstairs from my apartment in Brooklyn.
When I landed last year in this new big city hometown, I was hit with a whole new set of textures, and rhythms; to counter these I sought solace in abandoned piers and rooftops, replacing the mesas and sagebrush oceans of New Mexico.
These songs are voices from a campground in the desert winter, from behind the wheel of a yellow cab, of driving a rented car through the streets of a town that froze in time and still treats you like a stranger. These songs are hymns to that place, when you're not lost, but you're not quite there yet, when all you can do is know deep down that the next exit must be yours, "screaming like a blind man at the races".
Nels' first album, Sunday Shoes, released independently in 2005, was picked by BBC2's legendary DJ Bob Harris as his Album of the Year. .
Fast forward to today, and the release Andrew's second record, Off Track Betting, produced by Todd Sickafoose and due to be released March this year on Reveal Records and is set to be one of the landmark Americana releases of 2008. The new songs were recorded in Brooklyn at Trout Studios, and now spring from the textures and rhythms of New York City, as seen from the abandoned piers and rooftops as a new form of the red desert dust and sagebrush oceans.
The following is the full version of text written by Nels about the new album:
I think the thread of this album is a longing to belong to something bigger than us, a longing from outside, looking in through the window.
The last couple years for me have been a life in the margins, sleeping on floors and in parking lots, slipping in and out of bars and coffee shops in towns that barely knew I was there. I'd lived this marginal life before, in my early twenties, chasing Kerouac down the road, working itinerant jobs in the canneries of Alaska and planting trees in the forests of South Dakota. In this way, my past laid the road before me, easing the transition from the between years, when I was deep-rooted in the desert, to the well-worn boots of a troubador, the one's I've been wearing lately. I've found a romantic optimism that comes from distance, and saw it in the Off Track Betting house downstairs from my apartment in Brooklyn.
When I landed last year in this new big city hometown, I was hit with a whole new set of textures, and rhythms; to counter these I sought solace in abandoned piers and rooftops, replacing the mesas and sagebrush oceans of New Mexico.
These songs are voices from a campground in the desert winter, from behind the wheel of a yellow cab, of driving a rented car through the streets of a town that froze in time and still treats you like a stranger. These songs are hymns to that place, when you're not lost, but you're not quite there yet, when all you can do is know deep down that the next exit must be yours, "screaming like a blind man at the races".
Sonically, I learned to push the edges in the exploration of acoustic music with Todd Sickafoose. He had the vision to help me turn these sketches and storylines into cinematic shorts while keeping the desert places and cityscapes in the sounds. We worked at Trout studios in Brooklyn and recorded most of the tracks live to 2" tape, having the musicians all in one room kept a real organic nature to the record. A leslie speaker spun the electronic farfisa and arp sounds around the room in such a way that you could feel them buzzing and hovering like junebugs and zeppelins. We sculpted out all the parts in real time, often using the first or second take. We strayed from the traditional folk sound, moving into newer soundscapes to incorporate harp, klezmer banjos, sampled electronics, toy pianos and a glass orchestra. Looking in from outside, we were able to make a new place from the visions and imaginings a person may get when seeing somewhere from far away, maybe what you hope it will look like, when you get there.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
late night music, 25 Jun 2009
This is one for those late nights preferably accompanied. Good background music that won't upset your guests at a dinner party.It is largely accoustic although some interesting instruments are featured such as wine glass orchestra, mellotron, pump organ, fuzz guitar and harp. Not too long with only nine tracks and those new into love or with a reflective nature will be very happy with it.
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~ The Felice Brothers
~ Ryan Bingham
~ Nels Andrews
~ Bon Iver
~ Fleet Foxes
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