Pale Horse And Rider: Moody Pike (CD on Darla)

Band: Pale Horse And Rider
Label: Darla
Title: Moody Pike

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Band:Pale Horse And Rider
Title:Moody Pike
Reviewed By:Emma Haigh
Date Published:11/04/2004

Label:Darla
Format:CD
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Sit down, ease your feet underneath your body and curl yourself around the first cup of coffee. You might have three this morning, a luxury of Sunday. From the sinking plush armchair look out the window. Look at your bed. Look at your wall. Pondering the effectiveness of chucking a book or a pack of fags at the CD player to make it start. Try it. Get up then anyway, because now the book is lying at an awkward angle, like an elegant murder, and the cigs have heaped themselves across the spine. You should know by now that never works.

Kicked into life, a gradual meandering flourish expands and unfolds across your room and weighs into you. A combination of groaning vocals and thudding soft drums lure you in. It’s not a grand entrance. It’s a delicately woven tale of polished dedication to a cause hidden deep within lyrical subtlety and instrumental simplicity.

Known primarily for his work as an electronica aficionado in art project Aarktica, Jon DeRosa’s incarnation as Pale Horse and Rider tears at your heart, aches in your ribs, and tenderly plays with the imagination. He has a certain knack for lilting sincerity; honesty falls from his lips that seduces and lulls.' Moody Pike' is both a proper country album and a proper blues album. It is gracefully mourning, and wilfully introspective. Held aloft by an unbroken straining cello, a groaning warble growling louder, pawing brushed drums over whining slide guitar or the winding stroll of a drunken plea, each track stands alone.

He deliberates on love, the sweet binding clarity of liquor, and gets lost in moments of a history so personal they could be your own, no matter how far from the 12-and-under you might be. From the deeply affecting balladry of 'Quarters' to the meanderingly philosophic 'Route 224' to the brutal honesty and cringing humour of 'The Drinking Boy', DeRosa’s acoustic gifts are balanced by ocular lyricism that remove you from your surroundings with plunging escapism. And just when you start to think maudlin meant gossamer delicacy, he hits you with 'Weight of My Soul', and isn’t it just. Hungrily, he growls you down a throbbing path and holds you there, pressing the weight of his soul against your own yearning, gasping frame.

This album is both perfectly conceived and beautifully rendered. Impressively, and not just because this is a first album, DeRosa succeeds entirely in remaining unencumbered by the weight of a genre that too is often sodden by its own traditions.

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Perfectly conceived country blues on debut album from Pale Horse and Rider, the new project of Jon DeRosa who is known primarily for his work in electronic art project Aarktica

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Moody Pike - CD
Perfectly conceived country blues on debut album from Pale Horse and Rider, the new project of Jon DeRosa who is known primarily for his work in electronic art project Aarktica

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