Showing posts with label Spencer Dobbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spencer Dobbs. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Spencer Dobbs - If The Moon Don't Turn Its Back On You & Lunar Yearling













I have really liked Spencer Dobbs ever since I heard his 2016 tape Changed Fool (check here), and I've listened to all his later releases in which he plays bluesy/folksy acoustic depressing music with great lyrics. He was kind enough to send me links to two of his most recent releases and If The Moon Don't Turn Its Back On You is the most extraordinary of his work, as it doesn't follow his usual acoustic pattern, but is more improvised and psych folk centered on electric guitars with slides, glissandos, in-song detunings, quite close to Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack and Karen Dalton freaked folk invocations. It's certainly slightly more ugly and sinister than most of his stuff and it's superb. Get your ass up and download it at the Dust Press bandcamp here.

His most recent 2023 tape is called Lunar Yearling, he says that he recorded it in one take drinking Genesee Cream Ale, and is closer to his more expected beautiful melancholic stuff. I'd dare to say that it's probably my favorite album of his. It's hard to emphasize how heartbreakingly desperate and down to earth it is. Go order it right away at the Dust Press bandcamp here.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Spencer Dobbs - Changed Fool tape (Sloow Tapes)




Beautiful, deep, desperate, drunken late in the night acoustic folk music by this musician from Texas. It starts in a deceptively hopeful manner with "Artifact Moon," which is similar to the tracks from Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska but quickly descends into very depressive territory, kinda similar in attitude to the acoustic folk albums of Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till of Neurosis, but with a much richer sound accentuated by piano, harmonica and a heartbreaking saxophone. I hear influences from the darkest moments of Leonard Cohen and Neil Young's Tonight's The Night, and the psychedelic textures owes to Charalambides, with whom Spencer is affiliated. And then the tape closes with the beautiful, epic and again kinda hopeful "There Is A Dream," closing the circle. Very highly recommended music. I see there is a double cdr version of this on his Bandcamp, containing an extra track and a booklet, and I think he deserves some good support, so snatch it. 2016 tape on Sloow Tapes.

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