Terrors - Ceaseless Fall (Bathetic CS)

Double trouble in honor of the 22nd. This one's from Bathetic Records, which got sent to me a ways back and is run by he who is known as Pink Priest. This tape's cover, with staunch witnesses lining the skies, grabbed me hard by the jugular, so it was a whole other revelation to tap into the sounds here. I'd heard of Terrors before, but the sounds had never made it in my hands, so to tell the truth I know very little about the project. Suppose I could do a quick research run but faghettaboutit. It's the smatters that matters, right?

Truth be told, I was quite taken on first spin here. Expected some sort of crudded out noise stuff but instead I got some real gentle guitar picking and echoed out coos on "Locks Fall Pattern." Like some tiny Simon and Garfunkel moment stretched out from sea to shining sea till it's so big you can't tell Simon or Art from lemon tart. "Hit & Miss Iowa City" has some honest-to-god lyrical content (a real rarity for the material that swings through here most days) but it's well balanced with flicking glimmers of guitar strum and lope with some extra careful delay treatment that never sets the tone or guides the work so much as fleshes it out into its own microcosmic wunderworld. Super careful stuff, and refreshingly unapologetic in its gentility.

The flip's "Withdrawing" walks the line between reverb overdose and moist folk nocturnes, sneaking in the cracks between Astral Weeks and Dave Bixby. Glowing stuff that's bare bones enough to pack an emotional wallop without reverting to sleeze. Toy piano (or whatever it is...) is so blown out on entry it just glides right into the tremolo mix, disappearing like a drop of milk into water and exuding that most careful balance of sorrowful joy found only in the old Las Vegas crooner back on the drag singing staples for silver. Real lovely like. "Soft Proliferating Light" closes things out by murkifying and proselytizing towards the reflections out west. I hear that the San Andreas fault splits off faster every year. Does it take the sunset with it though? This should give you some sense. A real gem that fills all sorts of niches. Call it the winter blues, but this stuff's soft to the touch and boiling for the brain, which amounts to none other than the best recipe of the season.