LIZ DURRETT @ echoplex

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Vic Chesnutt Band || Listen || MP3
featuring Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion

As on 2007′s North Star Deserter, Chesnutt is here joined by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra, as well as Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto. Together they build a sound that walks a line between country-folk, Southern soul, and post-rock, which works because the music’s uncertainty about its identity often mirrors Chesnutt’s own doubt. Opener “Coward” deals in dread and aggression with its crawling tempo and doom-laden, harmonized guitar outbursts.

There are a couple of welcome leavening moments– the bright organ and Leslie cabinet guitar of “Concord Country Jubilee” chief among them– but At the Cut is foremost a dark album, and about as far tonally and sonically as Chesnutt has been from 2003′s highly polished Silver Lake. The restraint of the musicians involved leaves Chesnutt’s fragility at the center of the music and lends the album an air of refinement and wisdom that could have easily been drowned out by guitarists more eager to call attention to themselves. – Pitchfork

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Liz Durrett || Listen