During Spring every year, the worlds music press descends on the SXSW conference held across Austin, Texas. Wearing box-fresh cowboy boots, critics swarm along the blues bars and juke joints of 6th and Congress looking for the next big thing and BBQ ribs. But what they are searching for is further afield. What they want to hear is out of town, past the city limits, past the huge boneyards containing the ghosts of the civil war dead, along carrion encrusted highways, past farm shacks and Mexican settlements, out into the real heart of the Lone Star State. This is where you can find the haunted Americana of georgias Horse.
Their new EP Shepherd is redolent of the sun-baked vacant lots of Wim Wenders Paris Texas, the gentle (ex pat) Americana of The New Pornographers, a light dusting of the folk psychedelia of Smog and the torrid and threatening country death songs of PJ Harveys To Bring You My Love.
This five track EP features the skewed and magnetic vision of singer/songwriter Teresa Maldonado but her brittle and skeletal songs are fleshed out by multi-instrumentalist Tiziano Hernandez (bass/guitars), Brad Thomason (drums) and Melly Rose (cello). But thats not to say that this recording sounds like it was handled by some kind of your mothers your brother, lives in a barn hillman. Their recent collaboration with hotly tipped Pitchfork favourites and electronic/dub step pioneers Various Productions (As It Stops Raining, Fire Records) has certainly influenced the group the title track and Snake & Sparrow, creak and echo as if recorded in a haunted house, on haunted equipment. From the most basic of set ups, a deeply affecting and subtle beauty is achieved.
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