Paul Duncan demo-pitch

Paul Duncan Above The Trees (Hometapes)

Walking through walls, woods//Out May 1

(unpub. pitch,  2007)

Above The Trees is new album by Paul Duncan, one of Daniel Gill's clients (he says we can use any track). Never heard of this guy, but his musicians' creds def figure here: from Tortoise, Brokeback, Eleventh Dream Day, Freakwater, Janet Bean's Concertina Wire, Rhys Chatham's Essentialist, Grizzly Bear, Smog, Cursive, Vandermark 5, among others, Never crowded, it's chamber Americana, the rarer kind, though mellow and somewhat familiar, yet not too limpid for brains, which have learned  from the dense lyricism of John Cale's Vintage Violence times the spacious tone poems of Weather Report's Mysterious Traveller, the sky over and through the forest, the use of strings for tension and warmth at the same time, fluid sounds that curve around as bass lines walk by, words that work with the other sounds to keep painting scenes of transition that we're moving though, yet nothing too vague, there's def an arc of implied narrative, motifs and impulses that reappear, recombine, return like the seasons, requiring decay, and the kind of destruction which might as well be in an almanac. The rhythm section and the brevity and momentum of the tracks keep me trekking along through the woods, singing, "Oh pendulum, refracting our skin, the dog eats our bones and we eat our friends," while the girls bid the Lady Of The Lake to bring them horsies, and Uncle Jim tells her to bring him another drink.(The eagerness of certain periodically recurring tempii, signifying anticipation's insatiabilty/nature's renewal, begins to seem less Forever Young than strung-out at this point, but it's all part of the flow, Joe.) Sort of postacidfolk, cos freakiness is well-contained, under Uncle Jim's hat, and whatever weather's coming (back again). And we might want to mention his 2005 album, Be Careful What You Call Home. Not quite sure which track I'd use, but like I said, we can use any.