The Renderers — Monsters and Miasmas

The Renderers have a very scary name for a folk-rock act such as them.  Makes me think of abduction and torture, or maybe I'm thinking of "rendition"...  Well going back to the band, they have remastered an old album (due to bad sound) called Monsters and Miamisas...

This New Zealand act tends to fare better with their acoustic side.  There's lots of good, doomy folk and Americana on tracks like "Deep Hole" and "A Little to the Left", the latter sung by Mayrose Crook who definitely suits such material better than on the more upbeat rock-oriented numbers (which tend to try to be early Dream Syndicate without much success.)  But there's an even number of slow-burning acoustic to the usual rock-oriented tracks.  One of the rock tracks, "A Forest of Forests", does have a Richard Thompson-edge to it (at least...), being sung by Brian Cook.

So Monsters and Miasmas is essentially a mixed bag of an album.  If they would concentrate on their folkier stuff rather than trying to be a rock group, the Renderers might have more potential.