3 out of 5

Produced by: Jean Brown, Le Barn Lillywhite

Label: Jade Tree

Kicking off a trend of issuing albums in pairs, ‘How’ was cut from the same sessions or time as The Gap, and, as an interesting juxtaposition, is as pared down as that album was pro-tooled.  Both discs function somewhat as “anti” albums in a sense, though, with this disc’s experimentations expressed via ambient washes of noise or pluckings or lo-fi recordings of children singing nonsense, leaving only an EP’s worth of actual “songs.”

Which are quite pleasant and quite simple, and very minimal, guitar and a toned down Kinsella, singing his own (usual) firm of nonsense.

The journey of Joan of Arc started to take shape here: not one of full-on albums, per se, but brief experiences.  How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More? may not be an especially remarkable experience, but that feels like the point, the blurred photograph of its cover and the leftover origins of its recording evidence of a fleeting memory; an occasion that pays to revisit time and again.