A Song For Friday: Feeble Little Horse
A digitally-detailed blast from Pittsburgh. Also: Emily A. Sprague, Lennie Rayen, Veps, Clutter, My Brother's Keeper, James Wengrow, Eli Shane, Nirmali Fenn, Evans-Weiler/Falzone, JACK Quartet, etc.
In the three years since Girl With Fish, their “laser-focused” second album, Pittsburgh band Feeble Little Horse has only grown more uncertain about our hyper-consumerist, computerized culture and their place in it. The liner notes to their third album, Bitknot (Saddle Creek), which came out earlier this week, are quite a read! But at the same time, they’ve only become more convinced (and convincing) about a digitally detailed approach to music that combines crunchy guitars, candy-coated electronics, pounding rhythms, and sugary melodies. For their first album without founding member Ryan Walchonski (now heading Aunt Katrina), Sebastian Kinsler, Lydia Slocum, and Jake Kelley pack each meticulously constructed track with ear-tickling contrasts in volume and texture.
The album kicks in with Doorway, which opens with a blast of feedback-laden guitars before quieting down to a drum machine and murmured vocals. The guitars soon return, however, accompanied by massive drums, establishing a loud-quiet-loud dynamic that’s soon derailed by a coda featuring stuttering, chopped-up vocals and percussion.
The lyrics are equally arresting, filled with tangible details and poetic leaps, as in this excerpt from the first verse:
In the doorway
I left it open
Cold, wet air
Makes the kitchen floor wet
When it’s snowing
The lawn is coated
My tongue is frozen
Against your silver neck
Are you heavy?
Rope is waiting
Swing me to sleep
Now trained to expect the unexpected, the listener is prepped to delight in whatever comes next on this fantastic blast of an album, whether the pastoral banjos (or banjo-like guitars or synths) and birdsongs of Rewind or the throat-shredding shrieks that close out DMT (for “death money tech”) and end the album. By that point, it’s just FLH doing what they do in thrilling fashion.
Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.
Other Recent Releases
Emily A. Sprague - Double Moon (RVNG) This single’s beautiful convergence of Sprague’s ambient side with her singing and songwriting side now has me dreaming of an Elsa Hewitt collaboration. But she already has help from Vera Haddad, her partner and a visual artist who has done album covers for Sprague’s band Florist, whose voice can be heard in the mix. Someone called Andras (aka Art Wilson, A.R. Wilson, 1/2 Wilson Tanner), contributes a sweet dub mix for the b-side, which adds new rhythms and perspectives to the original. There’s also a song called Dusk, which is only available on the 7” - I’ll let you know what it sounds like when it arrives next month! Needless to say, I am excited for this new chapter in Sprague’s creative practice.
Lennie Rayen - Entertain The Space (Self-Released) “Yeah I know what I want, i’m not worried about/Getting there or comparison bringing me down/I’ve got it all and they can’t take what I have/Won’t feel the fall cause it’s not setting me back,” this young singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist sings on I Know What I Want, the third song on her debut album. The rest of the album only continues to prove just that, at least musically speaking. Located in the tiny Ontario town of Cobalt (pop. 989), Rayen conducted a cross-border collab with American producer (and cat-content creator) cleomo, and the songs are filled with just the right amount of detail and, when needed, power. A terrific debut from someone who may know what they want, but could get more than they bargained for if there’s any justice left in the music biz. Hat tip to Hugh at Turn & Work for the review and “Backstory” that clued me in on Rayen.
Clutter - GirlVsHeart (PNK SLM) Another banger from the Swedish foursome, following up their last killer single with more scrubbed and serrated guitars, slamming drums and vocals delivered with just right amount of insouciance. I am both beyond ready and completely unprepared for their full-length debut whenever that should happen.
Veps - ChurchyardStreet 8B (PNK SLM) These four women (Laura Dodson - guitar/vocals; June K. Urholt - bass; Helena M. Olasveengen - keys/vocals; and Maja B. Berge - drums) from Oslo have been playing together since high school. Now in their early 20s, they’re controlling what they can control and making sleek, polished indie rock, while dealing with the bittersweet and messy transition to adulthood. This is already their third album. May they stay friends and make music for decades to come.
Various Artists - My Brother’s Keeper (NYFOS Records) “You can’t be everywhere,” may not be the best excuse for missing a performance, but in NYC, it’s the reality. But even if I had been at the Kaufman Music Center in November 2024 to see one of the shows that this album is drawn from, I would have been delighted to have something so special preserved for all time. Conceived in a dream by singer Justin Austin and realized by him and Stephen Blier, the Artistic Director of the New York Festival of Song, the program is an evening-length mixtape of songs, many by Black composers, assembled in tribute to Black brotherhood. While Austin himself was not free to sing in the program due to an opera contract, his vision was brought to spectacular life by tenors Joshua Blue and Chaz’men Williams-Ali, baritones Will Liverman, Joseph Parrish, and Jorell Williams, and bass-baritone Alan Williams. Accompanied by Blier and Parrish on piano, this dazzling array of vocal talent cuts a swath through songs by Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still (both with lyrics by Langston Hughes), Leadbelly, Schubert, Richard Rodgers, and many less-well-known, including Williams, who contributes two songs.
Highlights abound, but the opening hymn of Come Unto Me, in an arrangement by R&B group Take 6, is a fantastic introduction to what’s to come, and Liverman’s turn on Some Enchanted Evening may have caused some to swoon in the audience. Sung by Williams, Rachel Peters’ Santa Ain’t Black brings the house down, never more so than when he sings “Santa ain’t Black/Santa ain’t brown/Santa ain’t red/Santa ain’t green/Cause Santa ain’t... real!” But when the ensemble tears through a searing version of He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, the 1969 song by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, all the pain, beauty, and love that served as the impetus for the show crystallize over seven glorious minutes. Now I really wish I were there for one of those nights!
James Wengrow Crypsis Trio - Emissary (Endectomorph) Dazzling precision and a touch of danger make this jazz debut consistently compelling. Led by Wengrow, an Australian guitarist now based in Brooklyn, and completed by Mathias Højgaard Jensen (bass) and James Paul Nadien (drums), the trio has a distinctive sound informed by their broad interests in all kinds of music. Wengrow, for one, also plays in a jazz-metal fusion band and the Brooklyn Qawwali Party, which features the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Within jazz, their approach is well represented by covers of Thelonious Monk’s Let’s Call This, which loads on atmosphere and abstraction before sweetly stating the theme, and John McLaughlin’s This Is For Us To Share, which captures the original’s yearning in stripped-down fashion.
But Wengrow’s compositions more than hold their own and are filled with color, fire, and inventiveness. Arborealpolitik (love that title!) is one highlight among many, with a spacey opening that moves into funk, with burbling bass and slamming drums goading on the shining guitar. As on the rest of the album, the three players sound like they’re on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what happens next. You will be, too.
Eli Shane - All You’ll Be Is Song (Self-Released) Like Mikaela Davis and Low Leaf, Shane is bringing the harp into a new context, but for him it’s not pop country or avant-R&B, but rather psych-folk. Westlands, the fourth song on this second album, is a perfect microcosm of his methods, opening with the warm resonance of finger-picked harp, accompanied first by birdsong, then by cellos (Joy Chu and Frida Rahmani) and vibraphone (Yi-Lin Chen). Amidst this rich sound-world, Shane’s multilayered vocals are mildly disorienting, but only in the best way. The song crescendos, cellos and harp growing in intensity, before it settles down for a sparkling duet between harp and birds. Explore further, and you just might become the song, as the album’s title promises.
Nirmali Fenn - When Apathy Is Betrayal (New Focus) Born in Sri Lanka and displaced to Australia, Fenn has put all of her heart, soul, and intellect into this album-length work, and the committed performance by Prague Modern, conducted by Petr Louženský, translates that directly to the listener. Fenn’s heritage is incorporated as well, with percussion inspired by the drumming traditions of Kandy, Sri Lanka’s cultural capital, and vocal writing that draws on the Dhrupad tradition of North India, a form that goes back centuries. Special kudos to sopranos Barbora Kabátková and Pavla Radostova for navigating this challenging material with precision and emotional heat.
The emotions run high in Fenn’s conception, too, which seeks nothing less than to erase the distance we feel from others who are suffering. In just one coup de theatre, she expertly weaves an audio collage of global protest movements, from the Berlin Wall and Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring and climate change, into the fifth movement, people who walk barefoot in their hearts. If that all sounds like a lot of freight for a musical piece to carry, the strength of Fenn’s orchestration and composition results in a tremendously compelling and deeply human experience.
Morgan Evans-Weiler & J. P. A. Falzone - Grid and Gradient (Kuyin) This album is both meditative and unsettling, with the latter quality probably stemming from the use of two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart. In addition to the pianos, Falzone plays the celeste, and Evans-Weiler, who composed the six-movement work, contributes violin and electronics. While filled with subtle gestures, this is very involving stuff.
JACK Quartet - Rand Steiger: String Quartets (Kairos) I was introduced to the “spellbinding” music of Steiger on the 2014 album, A Menacing Plume, which featured five pieces performed by the Talea Ensemble. Now we have the JACK, a string quartet of equal ability playing two major works for strings. Introspective Trilogy (2017-2025) is dense, multilayered, and filled with drama and surprise, with Steiger displaying his typical command of the electronic augmentations. Tropes (2018) is for strings alone and is structured nearly like the first movement of a symphony, with an urgent opening that draws you through several sections of varying dynamics, before ending on a white-hot note. Just because this collection was as great as I expected doesn’t mean I take it for granted!
Alex Van Gils & Carrie Frey - Lesser Arcana (Long Echo) I’ve known of Frey’s bold and virtuosic viola for years, having first seen her play Bahaa El-Ansary’s Nightmare for guitar, violin, and viola at the MATA Festival in 2018. Since then, one thing that’s been occupying her time (besides playing with the Talea Ensemble and working with the great Adrianne Munden-Dixon) is improvising with Alex Van Gils, a master of all things synth and keyboard related. This collection sees them putting that work on record for the first time, and proof of concept comes right at the beginning with the 15-minute five of cups reversed. Starting with a warm, mellow viola intro, the piece gradually ramps up into a thrill ride of electronic tones and viola textures that sounds like it’s combusting spontaneously. While that track and the last piece give away their interest in Tarot, other pieces reveal witty inspirations from Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing comic book, and Best Western motels. Their sense of humor takes literal form in the brief laugh track, which includes samples of Frey’s guffaws turned into counterpoint for her nervy viola playing. Fun and fascinating stuff from two experts generous enough to let us into their little secret.
Note: The graphic above is based on a photo by Eve Alpert.