Skip to main content

Haints of Dean Hall :: The Haints of Dean Hall


May is New Zealand Music Month! For the rest of May, Jamie will review NZ bands, attend (and subsequently write about) NZ shows, and generally give attention to some of the greatest bands you've never heard of.


I realised while writing this review that the New Zealand albums I've chosen to patronise are a little on the sanguine side, so far. Perhaps it's the Autumn chills creeping between my sleeves, but this review is going to follow the set pattern. Haints of Dean Hall play mellow, but troubled, acoustic melodies. Very fitting for anyone wishing to light a few candles, cut the power, and hide under a blanket as a gale howls through the gaps.


The title 'Haints'--a term borrowed from Southern American vernacular meaning 'haunt'--befits this trans-tasman, alt-country duo, as Kathryn McCool (vocals, guitar) and Stephen Reay (guitar) dub themselves. However, I have no idea where Dean Hall is. If it's as haunted as a few of their tracks, however, I don't think I want to know.


Beneath many tracks there seems to lurk a disturbing history. Kathryn sings in soft, sometimes self-limiting notes--they almost comfort the listener. But her broken tones betray a darker plot, such as in Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. In this song, the listener knows neither what has happened, nor what will happen, yet the slim details given are enough to dredge feelings of guilt long suppressed. Listening to the album, I can't help but feel like I an trying to call up an old memory--one that resists, one that perhaps wasn't real to begin with. In fact, the eerie harmonics achieved between Kathryn's vocals and Stephen's acoustic picking are themselves like recollections--lovers' half-remembered faces: images to which we cling, but which inevitably distort, congeal, and blend into a light wholly unrecognizable. The Haints of Dean Hall write songs as chilling and unstoppable as the wind.


Band :: Haints of Dean Hall

Album :: The Haints of Dean Hall

Verdict :: Recommend for the haunted and unhaunted alike

Song :: Actually, We Don't Talk About It



Note: All download links to mp3s posted on D&C have been disabled. You may listen, but you may not have.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lucero Video for "Darken My Door"

Darken My Door from Lucero on Vimeo . It's good to see that a serious band doesn't have to take itself seriously. Even better when a band's fans don't take them too seriously. "Darken My Door" off of Lucero's latest album, 1372 Overton Park , is a song about losing stuff--girlfriend, money, dignity. In fact, a lot of Lucero's songs are like that, but I'm not getting into that now. I'm talking about the video, which has so much to love. Obviously, I love the fact director Alex Mecum has used a puppet as the protagonist. But it's what the puppet does that makes this video so much fun. Puppet eating chili dogs, puppet drinking whiskey, puppet giving blow jobs . . . Hell, there's even puppet vomit! It's ridiculous, yes, but also tragic. By the end of the video, if you don't feel a little sorry for the scruffy faced whore puppet, then you have no soul. Here's a little more about the videos for Lucero's new album: To promot...

Okkervil River, Wellington, New Zealand :: Live Music Review

There are energetic drummers, and then there is Travis Nelson. Truly, he is 'Animal.' Okkervil River albums have so much personality, the songs themselves become characters: players, people in the guise of animals or gods (and who can tell the difference sometimes?). And like watching a melodrama, we are witness to emotions that heave and plummet with frightening force. The songs can be drunken youth: the rotund boots on their feet knocking wildly on every surface. Or they can be villainous and smart, full of smiles and wishing-you-well up to the second they thrust the dagger into your belly. Pitched, lust-crazed, calculated: that is one half of an Okkervil album. The other emotion is equally intense in its thick, slow agony: the eternity it takes to remove the knife, knowing you have it all to do over. And so it goes: soaring, drunk, angry, knife, stab, agony, pull-it-out-and-let's-do-it-again. At the San Fransisco Bathhouse in Wellington, New Zealand, on a crisp early a...

Best Music of 2008 [Last.FM gobbles our scrobbles]

Internet radio / social network / music discover tool Last.FM has released its Best of 2008 list. There are going to be dozens of "best" lists coming out in the next few weeks, but this one should command your attention. The list is not based on radio play, and it is not based on best selling albums. It is based on the number of times we (that's the royal "we" in all it's regal garb) have played tracks from our iTunes, iPods, Songbirds, or any other player that allows scrobbling. It is based on what we wanted to hear. We pressed play. We made the playlists. The only fault I can find lies in the Top 10 Tracks, which basically MGMT and Colplay. But that's what you get with raw data. To me, the Artists list is the most compelling. You will find no Kanye West on this list; no Britney and no Janet. You will only find the artists played incessantly and obsessively.