Monk Parker - Crown Of Sparrows - New Vinyl Record 2017 Grand Jury Pressing - Melancholy Lo-Fi / Indie Rock (FFO: Neutral Milk Hotel)

Street Date: 8/4/17

Drawn mostly from the same huge batch of sickbed recordings, the new album is both majestic and feral, it’s tension hidden beneath a scratched-surface warmth, a woozy country narcosis, with layers of feedback trembling just at the edge of earshot. It’s a dense, funereal sound evocative of Townes Van Zandt at his least folksy & most heroin-saturated. Stately, off-kilter dreamlike waltzes a la Richard Hawley or M. Ward build to explosive, gospel-tinged climaxes, and a woozy country narcosis kin to early My Morning Jacket or Phosphorescent alternates with feedback drones & buried noise melodies.