Send "Ben Weaver " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Mirepoix (pronounced “meer-pwah”), for those who don’t know, is a French concoction of aromatics, namely carrots, celery, and onions, primarily used to flavor stocks, soups, and sauces. While working on this album, Ben Weaver was employed at a restaurant, making mirepoix all day, his hands reeking of it perpetually. His goal was to make a highly personal record, and the smell became part of him.He’s a published poet, and these songs are essentially personal poetry set to the sparsest music you can imagine. The New York Times compared Weaver to the Band and Tom Waits, but on Mirepoix & Smoke, he comes across as a young Leonard Cohen dabbling in Americana. I love Cohen, and I love the not-too-specific genre they call Americana, but this album is, frankly, terrible, and was a chore to listen to, and continues to be a chore as I write this up. Thank God or [insert deity] there are only nine tracks. Weaver’s modus operandi is to sing like a baritone Matt Keating while lazily plucking a banjo or acoustic guitar, sometimes utilizing Erica Froman from Anathallo to provide off-key backup vocals and/or piano, and once or twice adding upright bass and hushed drums. The songs were recorded live, or in two takes, by Neil Strauch, who has collaborated with Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Iron & Wine (makes sense). The excursion begins with “Grass Doe”, which is more melodically sound than most tracks here, but it contains a strong penchant for trite lyrics and tired imagery. I’m sure his books of poems are as essential as Jewel’s. “City Girl” follows, showing what amazing things a bass and some drums can do, and we’d be getting somewhere if Weaver could figure out what a melody is. “Drag The Hills” goes for the ultimate intimate sparseness, which can be a very powerful thing if you’ve got the talent to pull it off. Weaver doesn’t....full text |
| Allmusic |
| After 2008's release of the electronically-enhanced acoustic sounds on Ax in the Oak, singer/songwriter Ben Weaver has gone back to his acoustic origins on Mirepoix and Smoke, his second offering for Chicago's Bloodshot imprint and seventh overall. This is no mere retreat, however. While Weaver's early albums were gritty, wily, and sometimes stomping blues and folk offerings where his voice owed much of its delivery to a younger Tom Waits, his sound here is an entirely different kind of organic: it's cut to the absolute bone, bleached in sun, and tempered by the wind. Weaver's new songs find him accompanied either by a guitar or a banjo; very occasionally a piano, a bass, or some drums -- also played by him -- are dubbed in. The only other person on the record is Anathallo's Erica Froman adding a plaintive harmony or backing vocal. Clocking in at under 30 minutes, the nine songs on Mirepoix and Smoke showcase another quality in Weaver's voice as well. While his low-register baritone is still there, it's been tempered by a lilting middle register and even a falsetto. Recorded in three days, Weaver's songs here are his most intimate; they're often pastoral and capture essences gently, yet indelibly and poignantly. Album-opener "Grass Doe," played on a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, is more than likely a retelling of his marriage and divorce with reflections on the natural world (which end up in virtually every cut) added metaphorical weigh, with Froman's backing vocal adding a near counterpoint of view to the narrative. "City Girl" is a taut, poetic character study; despite the obvious admiration of his protagonist, this is no mere romantic tale. With bass, banjo, and a harmony vocal, Weaver creates a speaking subject from the observed object. "Maiden Cliff" is dark-hued, banjo-painted meditation on nature that borrows part of its melody from the spiritual, "Oh Sinner Man." "Split Ends" is a sung poem about the loss of childhood innocence and its illusory ideals, and the onset of adult-sized responsibilities and their resulting disappointments. These difficult moments on the set are tempered by nearly profound observations of the perfect earth and atmosphere, tarnished only by humans and their dramas: "While the tree grows around our names in the bark/the last of our tracks fill with snow." Mirepoix and Smoke is Weaver at his most focused, inspired, and connected to that which is larger than himself....full text |
| Indiecollege |
| It’s diffcult to review an album that has already been reviewed perfectly by a friend and colleague only a few weeks earlier. You see, if it weren’t for Abby Holmes, I wouldn’t be saying this. If it weren’t for Abby Holmes being such a talented wordsmith and solid reviewer, I would never have begged her to write for my site, Radio Free Chicago. I would have never come around to the multi-layered pop wonders of John Vanderslice or taken a shine to The Moondoggies. Sure, I introduced Abby to some local favorites of mine like Lightning Love and Chris Bathgate but it’s Abby that undoubtedly wins this round of recommending great music with Ben Weaver. If it weren’t for Abby, I’d be completely unaware of the subdued beauty Weaver has to offer, blissfully ignorant to the lilting melodies and softly sung romanticism Weaver brings forth on Mirepoix And Smoke and for that, I would be that much less content. From the opening notes of “Grass Doe”, it’s hard not be taken by Ben Weaver’s music. He sounds at times like a more darkly upbeat version of Iron & Wine, a more accessible Bonnie “Prince” Billy, maybe even a hushed, less obviously county take on Justin Townes Earle, with whom Weaver shares a label in Chicago’s Bloodshot Records. Weaver displays his artful ability to weave an unforgettable story immediately in “Grass Doe”, telling the tale of love gone by the wayside in such masterfully poetic lines as “Their legs were twisted up in each other as the rain came down like watermelon seeds” and, later on in the tune, “There’s never gonna be another one like her and now you see her everywhere you go, like a tag under an overpass”. Near everyone’s loved and the vast majority of those people have lost as well. I know I certainly have. And it’s that fact that Weaver capitalizes upon, taking his own heartache, stated so poetically again and again and set to the simple backdrop of a fingerpicked guitar, a slight riff plucked on a banjo. By the time Mirepoix And Smoke closes, on the gentle notes of “The Rooster’s Wife”, you feel as if, to quote Abby Holmes, you’ve just listened to a “button-up flannel set to music”. Despite the fact that I’d never heard Weaver before listening to Mirepoix And Smoke, something about him made me feel immediately at ease, as though I were listening to the recordings of an old friend who’s reappearance in my life filled a very obvious void....full text |
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