Brown Recluse Sings "Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry)" cassette (Dead Format/2008)

When I first starting ripping my cassette collection this is the one that I was really psyched to rip regardless of it being a fairly recent release. I searched high and low for a mp3s. Heck, I am friends with one of the dudes in the band and one of the guys that run the label yet for some reasons no matter how many times I asked I couldn't get any mp3s of this awesome collection of songs that I could listen to in the early morning at my old office job or on those rainy days where I just want to stare into nothingness and get lost in a album. Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry) is the perfect album to get lost in as the songs have this lo fi recorded in a dusty old bare room vibe to it, a very raw under produced indie pop album. And when I say under produced I don't mean that in a sloppy, let's make everything sound like shit on purpose way but where every sound is just raw, live production which when acoustic guitars and vocals are the driving element in music is a style that my ears prefer. Following up their wonderful debut cdep Black Sunday, Brown Recluse Sings' Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry) is a wondrous collection of eleven instant indie pop songs to cap of the period of the band where they added "Sings" at the end of their name. Not sure why they dropped it, I rather liked that touch, giving a really traveling folk or gospel kind of vibe.

And as it turns out several of the songs that appear on Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry) have been re-recorded with full arrangements for the new Brown Recluse album, Evening Tapestry on Slumberland Records  which I highly recommend you pick up. It is rather impressive how the secluded serenity of the songs on this cassette were transformed into something even grander. It is nice to see something transform a embryonic state to something fully fleshed out, and especially when the original renditions found on Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry) are so strong. The talent that Brown Recluse's principal songwriter Timothy Meskers has for crafting perfected melodic indie pop tunes and for exhibiting such incredible vocal skills is a real treat to someone who has been surrounded by tone deaf would be vocalists for most of my time involved in independent music.

As much as I enjoy relevant music from my generation and current projects peers are working on I'd seldom tag the phrase timeless to much of if, but the music Brown Recluse creates is absolutely timeless. I have played their music for people who don't even like indie music or travel those circles and those people have responded "who is this? this music is great."- meaning that their music, like all great music transcends any silly genre or tag one subscribes to. Fear not you indie clown doctors afraid that your mom will dig this and eventually find her way to borrowing your Pavement bootlegs and your Sarah Records singles- Brown Recluse is definitely a indie band but a above that a great band.  Bias aside, and this is as a music lover speaking, I would be hard pressed to find another current band making better indie pop than Brown Recluse.

Before you get to the free downloading of Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry) do the smart thing and head on over to Slumberland to pick up the new Brown Recluse album Evening Tapestry as well as their previous 12 inch The Soft Skin, which is easily one of my favorite records in recnt years. For you lazy bastards I'll even provide links.

BUY Brown Recluse "Evening Tapestry"
BUY Brown Recluse "The Soft Skin"

Brown Recluse Sings Selected Hymns (of the Evening Tapestry) track listing
1. Hobble to Your Tomb
2. Foreign Correspondent
3. Impressions of a City Morning
4. Cattail Bouquet
5. Evening Tapestry
6. Monday Moon
7. Ascending the White Mountain
8. Summer
9. Wooden Fingers
10. Rinse Off the Newsprint
11. Alpha 60

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