Album, Single and EP Reviews


 

 

  Married Life Masters by The Agrarians


Married Life Masters cover art

Artist: The Agrarians
Title: Married Life Masters
Catalogue Number: No catalogue number
Review Format: CD
Release Year: 2008



Fast becoming a Bluesbunny favourite with three previous releases reviewed here (and one even making album of the month!), Baltimore's Matt Perzinski continues his voyage into lo-fi weird Americana country wth this release.

The formula remains much the same. The music is basic, acoustic guitar is strummed and scrubbed in a primitive fashion, Perzinski overdubs various instruments (drums, second guitars, often fuzzy, and occasional keyboard effects). His vocals, often multitracked, are all over the place, he strains to reach notes and displays little emotional contact with the songs. Overall the effect is a hypnotic drone that at times recalls Syd Barrett's swansongs. The lyrics are opaque word puzzles that baffle and bewilder. "Hide the Givers; Move The Cannon!", for example, reads:

"For sale/An unknown throne/To recant to/Travail/Ride the river through the canyon/We will all hope abandon/Desire's fire in the mire/Fuck and drop the title/Sire/ Hide the givers/Move the cannon/Trees hang our hopes to crash on/The dire skyline perimeter/Visualise suns for hire"

Other lyrics are reminiscent of early Will Oldham and the feel of those old Palace Brother records is recalled although Perzinski doesn't achieve the desperate blasted nihilism that Oldham displayed on the likes of "There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You." However the sense of bleak, redemptionless abandonment that has run through American folk (and folklore) hovers around this album like a dank and stagnant mist over a swamp.


www.myspace.com/theagrarians
Reviewer:
Review Date: June 2 2008