Boduf Songs - S/T

.....The world of art is made better by the participation of eccentric Englishmen. Mat Sweet is one such oddity. In a Robert Pollard-worthy pre-history Sweet has released multiple CD-R recordings on his own Baby Blue Recordings under a catalogue's worth of different names, including Four Man Ghost, Pistols at Dawn With Afterglow and of course, Boduf Songs. There is a little Syd Barrett, but just as much Roger Waters in Sweet's heredity, especially in his more traditional acoustic guitar style. On a track like "Claimant Reclaimed" you can almost, "(h)ear the lark and harken to the barking of the dog fox /Gone to ground" of Waters' "Grantchester Meadows." This tradition is refurbished with touches of noise and anachronistic tape effects as well as flourishes of bells and bowed cymbals to add occasional punctuation. The album's brevity and tone mark it as a close, more sombre relative to the also-recently-released Songs of Green Pheasant on Fat Cat Records (see review below). Both artists flout the current tendency toward folk music as free flowing improvisation and concentrate on songcraft which is solid but strange, and still canonical. Boduf Songs are apparently soft and unhurried, with hints of distress and decay which poke up and out into titles like "Puke A Pitch Black Rainbow To The Sun." It is to Sweet's credit that Kranky thought the original tapes so accomplished they re-released the album with no additional edits. Any impulse to change lanes may be witnessed upon recording the follow-up slated for release on Kranky sometime in 2006.

(Kranky)