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Pleasant Grove | Auscultation Of The Heart

What an absolutely stunning and intelligent album.
CD, Glitterhouse/Munich

Tekst: Maurice Dielemans

Publicatiedatum: 02 maart 2002

In 1999, Dallas natives Pleasant Grove anonymously debuted with their self-titled album on Last Beat Records. When they were discovered at last year's SXSW festival, the European release of their debut album followed very rapidly on the reliable and German alt.country record label Glitterhouse.

The first album is a brief, nearly 40-minute-long collection of six slow-fi beauties, with Neil Young-like electric outbursts and atmospheric, laid-back desert rock arrangements, mostly focused on acoustic instruments and with a very raw and deep melancholy. All of this makes Pleasant Grove's self-titled album one of the very best debut albums that I've heard in a while.

They are fronted by singer and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Striplin, who draws from a wide range of musical influences, but to give you an idea, his vocal abilities meet the likes of Jim James from My Morning Jacket and Robert Pollard from Guided Voices. Pollard especially shines through on the fourth track of the album.

Recently, the brand-new and stunning album 'Auscultation Of The Heart' was released on Glitterhouse, and that gives us even more minutes of shimmering country pop, although Pleasant Grove's line-up has been completely rearranged, with the addition of a new rhythm section, featuring Jeffy Ryan on drums, Tony Hormilosa on bass, and Joe Butcher on pedal steel. Very soon it becomes clear that the new sound of Pleasant Grove chooses a whole different direction. The introverted slow-fi encores took shape into something more bombastic and ambitious, much in the style of Calexico's spaghetti-western soundtracks, proving that Pleasant Grave are on a crusade to welcome the world to their romantic southern gospel music. Weird, unusual instruments, such as bells, omni-chord, pickaxe, moog, rhodes, mellotron, triangle, and - well - copy machines fill up their loving cup of soulful and gut-wrenching country music. Pleasant Grove prove to be unafraid of introducing their new visions, without exorcising the American ghost, and these songs still are bittersweet tales of lost love and misery. What an absolutely stunning and intelligent album this is from a fabulous band.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/pleasant-grove/auscultation-of-the-heart/1359/
Meer Pleasant Grove op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/pleasant-grove