In honor of its 50th anniversary, Call Me has now been reissued in all its power and glory. The record itself is as vital as ever, as is Green — 77 years old and still singing, still touring, and still every bit himself. But to listen to Call Me today is to pick up a call from a young man at the height of his powers.
I Only See the Moon returns to the tried-and-true form of their first three albums but learns from the mistakes of their next two, even as it shifts the experience. It feels like a first-person account of what it’s like to be The Milk Carton Kids’ microphone – right in your ears, Kenneth Pattengale stage left, Joey Ryan stage right.
Big Blood have been called psychedelic folk, and freak folk, and other things like “avant-folk” and “gothic country.” Driven by Colleen Kinsella’s powerful, keening vocals and amorphous, hazy instrumentals, the Weird Road EP is the newest installment in a 16-year line of wonderfully wonky songcraft.
As an object in itself, the album feels utterly unstuck from time. It’s evocative of the Laurel Canyonites of the late sixties, sure, but it refuses to paint within those lines. What sets it apart are Marina Allen’s voice and the landscape which surrounds it, and it’s in the interplay of these that a third, intangible thing emerges.
