Canaille's choice 13/9/2012

Raymond Byron and the White Freighter
Little Death Shakes lp (2012, Asthmatic Kitty Records)

Μια μικρή παρασπονδία σήμερα για έναν δίσκο που βάζει υποψηφιότητα στη λίστα μου με τα καλύτερα του 2012.
"The end of the world or the beginning of new things? Let's bet on the latter. Going on five full-length records since 2004, Ray Raposa's Castanets has given us a wide-lens look at deconstructed Americana. Where the 'Nets trafficked in swampy, ambient improv and avant-country gone coal black, Raposa's new stuff is pure roadhouse blues, buggy neons buzzing and spilled beer, big drums and the type of loud, up-in-the-red guitars that'd make Patrick Swayze bust some dude's grill. Stripped of all noise influences and focusing on straight-up songs, Little Death Shaker is a record evocative of late nights and dusty parking lots, long drives and boozy hookups. Where Castanets’ lyrics gave us Ray Carver-ian fragments and it's-what-you-leave-out-that-counts minimalism, here we see Raposa back from the battleground with stories to tell. This is the most lyric-heavy Raposa's been and it's also the most playful and humorous, and you get the feeling some of these songs would be the ones that would go down best near 2am at some weird sports bar dive in southeast Alabama/Iowa/Mississippi". From Asthmatic Kitty's press release