Child Readers - Dark Laughter
(Jewelled Antler)
While Jewelled Antler's policy of reshuffling its talented collective deck keeps turning up memorable hands, a troubling sameness has crept into some of the San Franciscan cohort's different-in-name-only permutations. There's no such problem with the Child Readers, the ongoing collaboration between omnipresent Jewelled Antler co-founder Loren Chasse and Jason Honea. The latter is he who heads 3 Acre Floor, the indie-minded parent label that fosters the main stream of Jewelled Antler activity. Chasse's field recordings and mix mastery, so essential to the enchantingly organic fiber of Thuja and Blithe
Sons, usually frame principal Antler multi-instrumentalist and nature nut Glenn Donaldson. Honea, Donaldson's bandmate in the quiet, nervous Knit Separates, possesses a much sparer style, comparable to that of Folk Implosion deserter John Davis. With hesitant strums, shy chords and a tremulous falsetto warble, Honea spins ragged stream-of-conscience reveries to which Chasse responds with his interjections of found and natural sounds and streaks of harmonium.
Chasse has described Child Readers, perhaps with tongue in cheek, as "Jandek meets Francisco López," implying a mix of untrained musical expression with closely recorded noises from the natural world. Dark Laughter is more powerful than an x+y analogy would suggest. Some of these tracks could certainly be Alan Lomax recordings of mountain youthfolk making up songs amid the fields, trails and streams of the unspoiled America. There's some similarity between Dark Laughter and the idyllic musings of Eyeless in Gaza, an avowed Antler favorite, though Child Readers' words and textures achieve a sense of Walden Pond serenity rather than a recalibration of traditional folk forms. And Honea is a much more soft-spoken singer than Eyeless mouthpiece Martyn Bates. No, Child Readers attains something unique, especially when Chasse's shadowy overdubs of rain, birds, bells, railway rumble and firepile crackle underscore the slightly awkward quaver of Honea's impromptu songwriting. Like the young mentality it purports to embody, this music is peaceful and innocent, yet constantly and acutely aware of the world of mysteries that surrounds it.
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