The debut by the Champaign-Urbana duo of guitarist Jacob Fleischli and drummer Rebecca Rury is an intriguing mix of alt-country and artsy slowcore, kind of like a cross between those two otherwise dissimilar duos the Handsome Family and the Tall Dwarfs. Strangely, though, the combination works. Fleischli's songs are pure country, from the Gram Parsons-like "I Was Born" to the forlorn, dusty ache of "I'll Ride No More" and the honky-tonk groove of "Ballad of a Bum," and his voice strongly recalls Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline vocal sound. However, the arrangements mix pedal steel, acoustic guitars and the requisite mandolin and fiddle touches with groovier sounds like electric guitar leads that recall Dean Wareham's liquid work in Galaxie 500, ghostly electronic keyboard swells and Rury's hyperactive drumming, all of which cover the songs in a vaguely narcotic haze that's pretty close to what Parsons might have been thinking of when he coined the term "cosmic Americana." The songs aren't all quite up to snuff, but the winners outnumber the losers by at least two to one, with the pained "I Thought You Loved Me" and the dramatic, cathartic "Today is the Day" the particular standouts. ~ Stewart Mason
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