Crap, my dulcimer is hammered again…

I’ve been dipping in and out of a really remarkable record called Travel er’s Advisory by Matthew Young, which is out now, jointly, on Drag City and Yoga Records. Recorded originally in 1986, this was Young’s second record, following Recurring Dreams. He played all the instruments, most strikingly a hammered dulcimer, which is present on almost every track and the dominant sound on most of the instrumentals. There’s a really haunting, spooky cover of Michael Hurley’s “Werewolf” – for that one, he switched to banjo – and an odd, kind-of-anticipating-chillwave home-made dance-rhythmed track called “Dummy Line”, which Drag City is offering as a giveaway.