It’s summer vacation. Finally. Which means I’m going to be doubling the number of reviews here on Adobe and Teardrops.
Wait, what?
There are two reasons for this: one, I want to continue to become a more efficient writer. The other is more pragmatic — I have three to four months’ worth of reviews waiting to be written and I want to work my way through it so my reviews can be more current. The next review will be posted at 5 PM.
So let’s start with Clothesline Revival’s The Greatest Show on Mars.
Clothesline Revival is the stagename of a rather enigmatic blues and roots aficionado (he doesn’t perform live and I’m not sure if he wants his real name shared.) He dubs old Alan Lomax field recordings over his sensitive, lilting blues guitar riffs.
I’m pretty sure there’s a Ray Bradbury short story about a bunch of astronauts arriving at a Martian town that’s full of their dead relatives and everything’s wonderful, but then it turns out it’s a Martian trap. There’s no trap here, but this album certainly feels a little uncanny, just like that Martian village. Clothesline Revival isn’t just raising the dead — the updated drumbeats and judiciously placed theremin (or maybe it’s a musical saw) give the proceedings a strangely current yet timeless cast.