Arbouretum's in a fog...and so am I

I think I'm on a perfect roll with Arbouretum having reviewed and/or interviewed the band on every album since Rites of Uncovering (still my favorite). So I can't let that slip, can I? Even if it seems like they're sort of making the same album over and over...

My review of Coming Out of the Fog in today's Dusted.

Arbouretum
Coming Out of the Fog
Thrill Jockey

Dave Heumann’s Arbouretum is arguably the best of the millennial classic rock bands, a guitar-fuzzed powerhouse that follows Neil Young’s trampled trail, bending folk and country into surreal shapes through the sheer force of volume and distortion. Coming Out of the Fog is Arbouretum’s fifth full-length, and it is not quite a complaint to say that it is more of the same. Heumann has placed more emphasis on song structure this time out, less on open-ended, jammed improvisation, and the recording quality continues to improve. Still, the basic template is not much different from Rites of Uncovering. As always, these are loud, slow, ponderously heavy songs that explore the conjunction of feedback buzz and intellectual inquiry, 16-bar blues and spiritual struggle.

More




Sean got into Columbia College, not the Ivy college in upper Manhattan but a small-ish, arts oriented school in Chicago, which sent him by far the prettiest acceptance package to date...including a sketch book and a set of stickers. So that's two safe schools, let's see what else he can wrangle.

Meanwhile his audition material is coming along really well. He's doing Trinculo from the Tempest for his comic/classical, Tom from the Glass Menagerie for a contemporary/dramatic and then he's got Edmund's bastard speech from Lear for a back-up. He's got one more that he's been working on, but it's not really coming together the way the others are, so he might try something else, not sure. The two main ones (Trinculo and Tom) are in my humble, biased opinion remarkably good. I'm starting to wonder if he might actually get in somewhere. We'll see.