CHARALAMBIDES - A Vintage Burden Review

For those desperate to pigeonhole A Vintage Burden into the Charalambides canon, it’d be fair to say it’s more of a ‘song’ type release than nearly all of their past collaborative work. It’s to the group’s credit that this doesn’t mean there is a reduction in the breadth or depth of their music....full text Watching Chet grope (the only verb for it, given the tangled webs Krug weaves) his way through 2000 words that compare Shut Up I Am Dreaming to American Idol, Oblivion (I am all Master of all guilds now, Betz!), Hemingway and Pynchon (all while name-dropping “Spence” like the two were sipping scotch at the clubhouse while he wrote it) is a blast, but so what am I going to do with Charalambides? Because if Sunset Rubdown has managed to color in gravity’s rainbow, A Vintage Burden is just grave, and the only things shining through Tom and Christina Carter’s clouds are heaving gasps and muted melancholy....full text Texas group Charalambides, considered by many to be the quietly serious godfathers of the whole freak-folk movement, have been turning out shimmering hush-folk masterpieces on cassette, CD-R and CD, since the early ‘90s, way back before there was any kind of movement to lead....full text