| 1 | Give Back (1:35) | |
| 2 | Little (5:51) | |
| 3 | Gratovs (1:02) | |
| 4 | City (2:50) | |
| 5 | Cripple (5:38) | |
| 6 | Rind (4:32) | |
| 7 | Mt. Heart (1:45) | |
| 8 | Little Raccoon (4:16) | |
| 9 | Forgotten (0:16) | |
| 10 | Follow (4:06) | |
| 11 | November (5:32) | |
| 12 | Milo (3:47) | |
| 13 | Downs (0:19) | |
| 14 | Agnus Dei (8:00) |
Well, I'll get it out of the way. Comparisons can quickly (crudely?) be drawn to Coco Rosie. You could almost call them kindred spirits; if you were inclined to do such a thing. But really, what we have is a whole other thing altogether. While both bands have a penchant for fractured, dreamy, simple faux-pop constructions, neither band actually sounds that much like the other. Yeah, there are the mildly similar child-like female vocals but beyond a cursory glance, each group offers something quite different. As anyone might be wont to observe, Belly Boat vocally also reminds one of Bjork or Joanna Newsom, but we can do more than lump together artists with "wee" voices. Can't we?
"Dear Robert Hanoy" is a long album. Well, it feels a tad long anyway. And it is peppered with beautiful moments, utterly simple beauty. Accordion floats about, drifts actually. The vocals are warm and off key in just the right way. The whole thing has a child-like feel to it (not childish), but in more of a man-child kind of way. The albums moment of perfect clarity occurs on the second song, ?Little?, which is mesmerizing and magical. While the other songs are quite good, none are as good as "Little" and the album unfortunately has a down-hill feel to it from there on. It doesn?t necessarily get worse, it just never tops the sheer beauty of this song, a perfect vagabond lullaby. It has a luscious little melody married with accordion sounds. Surely a hard feat to surpass. But it?s not like they don?t try.
?Follow? shines with a beauty similar to ?Little?, existing on an even simpler plane, consisting of the two ladies singing duet over piano that sounds like it may actually be piped in from another time or place. There is a rawness here that burns red bright, or maybe hazy orange. And the song overflows charm, bittersweet and strangely comforting. It flows into the next track ?November? to the degree where they could almost be the same song. Hell, a bunch of this album could be one long meditation, an extended suite whose parts have very little delineation and frankly, have no need for such. Honestly, I?d like it better as one long winding gush of broken odes. There are small songs or pieces that have a grating or disrupting effect, peppered over the course of the disc. I imagine they are there to add some sort of texture or structure, but I?m perfectly content with one piano and duet song flowing into the other, with the occasional accordion flitting about. Its such broken and unfeigned emotion splayed out here so openly that rings my bell. Four or five songs less and I think this would be a monumental document of a strange and lovely vision. Of course, who am I to say what their vision is. Hell, this is their vision and fuck me for trying to edit it. The technical, critical side of me says it could be trimmed. The booze-stained gut with a penchant for unchecked emotions says let the ladies ride. So does my right brain and my unbound, fanatical heart. Ride they shall. 7/10 - Adam Richards (12 September, 2007), Foxy Digitalis
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