Isidore

I got maybe a little too deep into the whole Church story a few years ago when I reviewed a biography of Steve Kilbey for Blurt...sort of put me off the band for a year or two, despite a lingering fondness for one of the best rock ballads of all time ("Under the Milky Way Tonight"). There was just too much interpersonal nastiness in the book for me. That even more than the drug addiction and major label compromises put me off for a while. But anyway, regardless of what you think about Kilbey as a person, he's got an astonishingly cool voice, eerie and melodic and able to turn the worst kinds of hobbit-loving tripe into something mystical and lovely.

Isidore is Kilbey's project with Remy Zero's Jeffrey Cain, a very occasional collaboration that has, so far, resulted in two albums in seven years. Life Somewhere Else is the second of these endeavors, recorded in much the same way as the first, i.e. Cain along with select other musicians -- Remy Zero’s Cedric LeMoyne and Leslie Van Trease, drummer Charles Darby Kilpatrick (The Great Book of John) -- make instrumental tracks, Kilbey records the vocals.

The album is really lovely, with misty, subtly electronic foundations and spectrally soulful singing, a slow-burner, if burn is even the term for it, the overall aesthetic is too chilled and restrained for that. Anyway, I like it a lot, and maybe I'll review it at some point, but meanwhile, here's the giveaway track:

"Reappearance"