Giles Corey — Self Titled
The album features nine tracks in all, and they last between just under the three & a half minute mark to just shy of the eight minute mark. Musically the album is a mixture of tuneful American folk, subdued indie rock, gospel music, subtle synth pop textures ‘n’ beats, doomed piano textures, layers of acoustic guitars, synth orchestration doom pop & the occasionally drift into more dark ambient/ drone territory- through this remains very song based, never fully dwelling in ambience for too long . Mixed in through-out most of the songs are traces of EVP recordings, creepy field recording elements, and documentary like recordings detailing ghost & paranormal encounters. And toping this is all off is Dan Barrett’s tuneful yet forlorn vocals.
The album as a whole album is soaked in a reverb, hazed & blurred production, and this really heights the lonesome, melancholic, depressive & at times creepy feel of the record. I can’t say any one songs here really grab me in the same way Have A Nice Life's work did. But I think the intentions here are more to create a vibe and a feeling rather than memorable song craft.
The book that comes with the CD album is a coffee table sized paperback book that features 150 pages of texts, lyrics & pictures. The texts tell an almost Lovecraft like first person/ diary tale that talks about attempted suicide, & the odd figure of Robert Voor- who is a medium, cult leader, talker with the dead, and inventor of strange contraptions. The black & white mostly full page pictures take in various old pictures of séances, ghost pictures, and mediums. And of course the book adds another dimension to the whole concept of the album & the it’s troubled, suicidal & haunted vibe.
All told this is certainly an intriguing project, and Dan has clearly put a lot of work put into both the albums production/sound layering, and the linked booklet too. On the whole the projects certainly not as vital or captivating as the great 2008 Have A Nice Life album & book set “Deathconsciousness”, but if your after an singer songwriter album that dips down in a few genres, yet also has a distinctively suicidal & sometimes creepy edge to it this could well be for you.