5 out of 5

Label: VHF Records

Produced by: Stephen Quinn (mastered by)

Damn. I like Jack Rose, and several of the other solo / acoustic artists who’ve appeared on VHF, but I sometimes have to be reminded of that. Like, in my head, VHF is a noise and psych label, so when something bubbles up that’s more on the chilled out spectrum, it takes a beat for my brain to… allow it in.

But sometimes you just need to hit play.

Two tracks on a 7″, and yet one of the richest listens I’ve had recently. ‘Grass Above My Head’ fits into that Jack Rose space: precise picking; a folk song given a kind of rock urgency and linearity. But whereas Rose’s works always felt / sounded somewhat traditionally informed to me, Cian’s come from a more modern school, the kind of stuff that gets watered down into Iron & Wine and the like (I would say “no offense,” but clearly I’m using that in some pejorative way) but is delivered here with both less and more polish – less studio veneer; more exactness: only the notes we need. And yet, it’s nowhere near sparse, giving the impression of lushness while maintaining its relative simplicity; a magic trick.

A similar magic is played on Black Flag’s My War, transformed into My War Blues on the B-side. Loose note twanging on the original becomes dirgy, odd tones in Cian’s hands, before kicking into the tracks rich rhythms (which sound celebratory outside of a punk context), then stripped down to something more befitting the original’s mood, giving the track its “blues.” I’m not a Black Flag fan, but this track accomplishes two things: makes me appreciate what the punk version does well; makes me appreciate what a great musician is able to pull from such a song, and make it wholly their own while maintaining its spirit.