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::k4:
a r t i s t :: Strand of Oaks
t i t l e :: Pope Killdragon
d a t e :: 2010-11-19
l a b e l :: n/a
g e n r e :: Folk
s o u r c e :: WEB
b i t r a t e :: 320 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: LAME
t r a c k s :: 10
p l a y t i m e :: 40:26
s i z e :: 100.3MB
tracklist
1 West River 2:34
2 Kill Dragon 3:20
3 Sterling 6:59
4 Bonfire 5:20
5 Alex Kona 3:34
6 Giant's Despair 2:42
7 Daniel's Blues 5:12
8 Last to Swim 3:47
9 Walking 1:46
10 Pope Killdragon 5:12
releasenotes
Timothy Showalter has a beard, an acoustic guitar, and a heartbreaking
backstory-- on the surface, the confessional singer-songwriter start-up kit.
But he'd prefer not to talk about his heavy history even if it would make you
root for him. For one thing, he'd rather not relive some of the personal
tragedy (a bad breakup, a house fire) that inspired his debut, Leave Ruin. But
it also would obscure the otherworldly mythology he creates on Pope
Killdragon, an astoundingly original twist on the loner-folk template.
He begins the mesmerizing "Sterling" like he's keeping an especially heavy
secret, but Showalter is merely an observer and a confused one at that. If his
lyrics are occasionally too loopy to pin down what it's "about," they're
perfectly suited for an unreliable narrator trying to piece together lost
time. In the darkly comic "Daniel's Blues", he inhabits Dan Aykroyd, racked
with depression after the death of John Belushi. I won't spoil the ending, but
it's by far the most pathos-laden song ever to recall the decision to take a
role in Ghostbusters. Meanwhile, the spare "Alex Kona" is the stuff of
Mastodon epics-- 12-foot monsters, sermons from the mount, mothers wailing in
the streets-- and to drive that point home, it's immediately followed by
"Giant's Despair", an honest-to-god doom-metal instrumental.
Those are the attention-grabbing tactics, but Pope Killdragon maintains these
strange juxtapositions throughout: historical fact with whimsical fiction, a
mournful delivery of absurd lyrics, an odd allure to the bifurcated sonics
where synths sidle up with acoustic guitars. It's easy to envision the "next
Bon Iver!" plaudits-- Showalter looks and sounds the part, but that would miss
the deeper commonality. Auto-Tune, Gayngs, rolling spliffs with Rick Ross--
Justin Vernon has made the most of the spotlight by cutting against an image
that requires him to continually hurt harder than others. Similarly, Pope
Killdragon's playfulness and sense of humor allow it a broader range of
emotion than the typical sadsack folkie. Showalter did a good deal of
bloodletting on Leave Ruin, and now Strand of Oaks' horizons are limited only
by his fantastical imagination.
Band-Url: http://www.myspace.com/strandofoaks
Shop-Url: http://tinyurl.com/4u5fjgv
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Strand_Of_Oaks-Pope_Killdragon-WEB-2010-k4