New Wax
From train disasters to the private letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Doug Burr's 2007 release On Promenade was filled with creative subject matter and Burr's keen sense of song structure and melody. The album received a considerable amount of praise for the Denton native along with some well-deserved songwriting awards. Burr's latest project, entitled The Shawl, was recorded over 27 hours in a scarcely populated (barely 300 residents) Texas town called Tehuacana in a building dating back to the 1860s. Burr and his small cast of contributors had some specific source material in mind: the Bible. The 9 songs on The Shawl are built out of excerpts taken directly from the Psalms of King David. While The Shawl isn't as readily accessible as On Promenade, Burr compensates for the lack of hooks with a masterful sense of composition. The instrumentation on The Shawl is mostly spare, which lends itself nicely to Burr's vocal timbre and the overall haunting tone of the album. On "The Righteous Will Rejoice," Burr is even backed by a loosely assembled choir that repeats the phrase "Surely there is a God." It's a hair-raising moment on an album full of them. With The Shawl, Burr has added another solid release to his growing repertoire, and fans of good music should find something here to like regardless of their religious affiliation. -- Capt. Obvious
12.24.2008
Doug Burr: The Shawl (2009)
at 2:26 PM
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6 comments:
This album is really growing on me. It is simply stunning at times.
Good choice Cap! ;-)
I really liked Doug Burr's earlier work, and I am looking forward to listening to The Shawl based on your review.
(I deleted the comment directly above because I meant it for your movie review below).
Happy New Year, Captain!
I photographed the recording session of The Shawl >
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oomingmak22/sets/72157606089514463/
The choir session was amazing and completely on the fly. There was no intention of having it in there. The guys just thought it would be a cool addition to the song so they huddled up and cranked it out. It was amazing to witness.
I truly believe that we have reached the point where technology has become one with our world, and I am 99% certain that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don't mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside... I just hope that as the price of memory drops, the possibility of uploading our brains onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It's a fantasy that I daydream about every once in a while.
(Posted on Nintendo DS running [url=http://kwstar88.livejournal.com/491.html]r4i ds[/url] DS TF3)
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