The Places “Songs for Creeps” (High Plains Sigh 2006)

Strange and not a little disturbing lo-fi americana

“Miner’s Lie”, the opening track on “Songs for Creeps”, is a jagged and discordant lo-fi homebrew (“below the welded iron crosses oh!/ the miners lie/waiting for you to die”) that promises an album of disturbing and challenging music. And so it transpires, and not only that, it’s one of the few albums that can genuinely be called unique. Recorded in strange places, on primitive equipment including 4 track cassette and with strange instruments (among them fake flute, pinewood diddle bow and raagini) it sometimes feels more like a collection of found sounds than an album. Amy Annelle’s breathy vocals (for the Places are she) flutter over the top, like Margot Timmins on a quiet day, intoning strange snapshots of vision, where torn-off bird wings and abandoned insane asylums rub shoulders with a man made out of glass and seven magnitudes of stars go out. It’s the soundtrack to a desert night in a one horse town, with a neon motel sign that stutters on and off and life is not so much seen as glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. The odd track is more musically conventional, like the Rainer-recalling desert blues of “Blessed Speed” and the rurally folky “I’m A-Gone Down To the Green Fields”, but even then the lyrics are still dark and skewed. Annelle has a strange vision, she sees places and people differently, and it’s this not-quite-right-ness, this slightly off-focus-ness, that makes “Songs For Creeps” such a compelling listen.

Date review added:  Sunday, March 25, 2007
Reviewer:  Jeremy Searle
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  The Places website