There's something about suburban basements that breeds intimate, warm, miserably hopeful singer/songwriters. They come to the surface from time to time offering heartfelt, stark, quirky four-track demos to the world. With his early odd homebrew,
Beck was a pioneer of the recent era, and Canadian gloom-folkie
Hayden and
Palace Brother Will Oldham have continued down a similar road. They all make recordings that offer a private snapshot of fragile psyches and inner maladjustment. Now,
Swearing at Motorists from Dayton, OH, exudes this same subterranean feel. On their second major release
Number Seven Uptown, drummer Don Thrasher (
Guided by Voices) and singer/multi-instrumentalist Dave Doughman punch through 15 short songs about TV shows, talking on the phone, and unrequited love. Richly layered and overdubbed with dissonant harmonies, the songs are striking in the way that Doughman doubles his vocals, producing a lo-fi version of the kind of high harmony one might hear in Irish folk (or perhaps similar to how it might sound if
Built to Spill covered an entire
Varnaline album). The heavy-rock sea shanty "Flying Pizza" and the
Tortoise-influenced "Talking Pictures" capture the diverse songcrafting of this team, and the bouncing horn section on "Calgon Take Me Away" brightens what would otherwise be a crushingly depressing song. Released in late 2000 on Secretly Canadian records,
Number Seven Uptown is like finding a long forgotten crate of
Dylan records in your mom's basement. ~ Zac Johnson