Tom Mank and Sera Smolen: Press

In our part of the country, Mank and Smolen are already pretty well known. They toured in The Netherlands in 2005, 2007 as well as in 2009. Their 2004 CD 'Souls Of Birds ' was ranked number 5 in the list of the best CD's of 2004 for this website. Their recent album 'Paper Kisses' is the 5th CD released by this original folk-duo.

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Tom Mank (N.Y.State) and (classically educated) cellist Sera Smolen have performed together since 1994 and have made an absolute unique experience of their ensemble. Their music is very subtle, sometimes experimental, very quiet and - unmistakable because of the cello - wonderfully sad.

On their latest CD there is the vocal assistance by Julie Last (she plays guitar on one track and is producer and recording technician as well), Jennie Lowe Stearns, Kathy Ziegler and Kirsti Gholson. There are also incidental contributions on djembe, percussion, piano, organ, tuba and banjo.

All songs are from Mank's hand, with the exception of one instrumental by Sera. Tom had some help with the writing of 3 tracks, from of some ladies (Julie, Kirsti, and Susan Hoover). The lyrics are almost all about his own experiences, such as Tom's own memory of the day that John Kennedy was murdered, of a warm day in Baltimore, of a train-trip to Amsterdam, ('On a train to Amsterdam, I write these words to you / Swans drift down the canal, we'll all be home soon / See the colors along the roads and the glasses lifted high / to the ones who left too soon / to the ones left behind’), and of memories of the past ('Paper Kisses')

"Paper Kisses" is an impressively beautiful and sensitive CD with a notable lovely leading part for Sera's melancholic 'classic' cello and the wonderful quiet singing of Tom. The poetic lyrics complete the whole in an really exemplary way.
BIG SURPRISE!

tom mank & sera smolen
- paper kisses

Singer-songwriter Tom Mank, together with cellist Sera Smolen, just completed a jewel of an album. Mank wrote all the songs (sometimes with producer Julie Last, Kirsti Gholson or Susan Hoover, but mostly on his own) – with the exception of one impressive instrumental by Sera Smolen.

The songs themselves are already beautiful, particularly with the enchanting cello of Smolen – but it’s the arrangements that give the album its special value.

You could fill several CD's with all the songs from foreigners in which Amsterdam appears, and this song will easily be the top selection. Relaxing, intimate, jazzy and magnificently arranged. This is a 'growing' album, to listen to more than once in the late evening. An intimate masterpiece.

- Moors magazine (The Netherlands), September 5, 2010

PAPER KISSES

Independent/CD Baby

He has a mature, 'dark' voice, plays guitar and writes almost all the songs. She studied at the Conservatory and gets miraculously melancholic sounds out of her cello. Tom Mank and Sera Smolen (from Ithaca, New York) are a special duo who just released 'Paper Kisses' - a strong fifth album.

It takes some time before you realize this, because when you listen to it superficially, it all sounds a bit slow, even more so as the tempo is rather low. But when you really sit down to listen to it, it gives you goosebumps. Then you will suddenly notice how beautiful the singing is (with Jennie Stearns, Kirsti Gholson and Kathy Ziegler), how touching and wonderful the cello sounds, and how beautiful the melodies are.

It is folky, sometimes a bit jazzy, more or less comparable to the music of the underestimated Ian Tamblyn, but quieter. And as we make comparisons, Sera Jane's cello playing (with the bow but also plucking) resembles every now and then the playing of Rufus Cappadocia (Bethany & Rufus), maybe less spectacular, but likewise effective. Also remarkable is the tuba playing of Dave Unland in 'Green Church', which exhorts us to change our consumer society to a more ecological life style.

'Paper Kisses' is an album for autumn more than the summer, but let this not be a reason to ignore it!

Paper Kisses
Tom Mank and Sera Smolen

"If you're looking for that three-o'clock-in-the-morning album, this is it. You know, when you come home polluted or just exhausted and need to wind down. When you wake up at three a.m. and can't get back to sleep. When nothing seems right and you need perspective or everything seems right and you need perspective. You see, the songs on Paper Kisses are soft kisses on the cheek and quiet conversations in the night. They are late evenings and early mornings in subdued light or in the dark. They are hope and despair and joy and angst. They are a Tom Mank & Sera Smolen gift to the discerning ears of people who treasure music beyond its use as filler or background music.

Yes, I am a fan--- a huge fan--- and more now than ever. I have written about them (read my review of their previous album, Where the Sun Meets the Blue, here) and plan to again in the near future because Mank and Smolen are carving out their own little corner in the music world and real music fans need to know. Genre-wise, I suppose you could casually toss them in the blender with folk and jazz and blues and classical--- or you could take the easy way out and just label them Americana. The thing is, genres are so limiting--- not in the music, but in the mind--- and God knows we are all, myself included, small-minded enough. Tom Mank is not, nor is anyone associated with this album.

You don't have long to wait to hear it, either. The fade-in on Broke Again is masterful, mood set with lightly strummed and picked acoustic guitar beneath slow-train cello and djembe so spot-on it made me look it up (it is a hand drum, but a hand drum of an exquisite nature when played right, and here Manuel Quintana plays it right). Add Smolen's cello breaks and Mank's light touch on that guitar and you almost have it. What really takes this song over the edge is the siren-like voices of producer Julie Last and Kirsti Gholson, who combine in perfect dissonance to give the song the essence of eerie which they recreate in the spine-chilling Amsterdam, the song ending the album. It almost stops the heart, it is so beautiful (and beautifully recorded).

To state that Mank's songs are very personal is an understatement. Where the Sun Meets the Blue's title track was written about a dear friend, Molly Finn, who was lost at sea in a hurricane. Mank had known her since she was five years old and came to grips with the loss partially through writing the song. On Paper Kisses, he continues and expands the tribute with Angels Are Watching You, reaching musically toward what he calls “the other side”. It is pure lament, the only description I find applicable, and is carried a step further by the vocal harmony and (pump?) organ of Kathy Ziegler.

The song title, Kennedy, says it all in a song written about the day of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy. Mank was just a kid that day but like all kids, remembers the shroud which covered the country and the world. It is a folk/dirge tribute capturing the perception of something gone bad wrong and which will live with him (and us) for the rest of his days. The simple addition of Joe Veillette's Gryphon 12-String--- which Mank describes as a cross between a harp guitar, a 12-String and a mandolin--- takes the song up a spiritual notch and a half (helped in no small part, again, by Smolen's immaculate cello and Gholson's superlative vocal phrasing). Anyone who remembers that day would have to be dead to not be moved.

Mank revisits his hometown of Baltimore in, not surprisingly, Baltimore, a reflection through time. Have any of us not, at certain times, floated into the past, heart throbbing with memories never to live again outside of our hearts and minds? Hot summer days, thrumming of the Bethlehem Steel Mill, childhood friends, high school sweethearts, family gatherings--- all of these and more are part of the song and, more to the point, Tom Mank himself. I sigh, but in a good way.

While Blue Train was inspired by Mank's view of the Bohemia of the 1920s and 1930s, it is more than that. Mank has this idealistic view of the past, whether he knows it or not, and never moreso than on this song about riding the “blue train” from London to Paris (yes, there was a train which was ferried across the channel during that period) and then on to the Riviera where passengers could experience its beauty. That was an era all to itself in the art world and is presented here in aura if not in fact.

Mank says Green Church is about his own move back to the land in the 1970s. He invaded the woods of Central New York and communed with nature as best he could. In the song, he updates the experience to include what he calls the new “off the grid” movement among young people. Not surprising when you know that his day job is as an Environmental Engineer, the seed probably planted in those woods where he lived in his own self-imposed exile. It is acoustic blues and the musical guest is tuba player Dave Unland. If you think the tuba can't work, you would be dead wrong.

Paper Kisses takes another light step into the blues, a tune about old pictures and letters, recently uncovered. Smolen takes the cello over the edge with musical statements you can't help but love.

Speaking of Sera Smolen, she contributes one composition to the album, as she seems to do to each, this time dedicated to Chief Luciano Perez. Titled Eagle Feather, it is a triumph of composition and improvisation for solo cello, something at which Smolen excels. This time, she stretches out a four-minute-plus musical tribute to Native Americans--- I say “stretches out” because many of her solo works are much shorter. This is done so well, it still seems way too short.

Mank brings in Jennie Lowe Stearns to help with vocals on Crooked Moon, and Mac Benford for his banjo. One listen and you won't ask why. Stearns serves up a haunting serving of wow and Benford grounds everything with plucking too good for a chicken. Music from a world of the past seen from the present.

This is a big step forward for Mank and Smolen in that it is the most cohesive effort to-date. The feel, the aura, the music--- they all inhabit one point in time, or so it seems. Mank has grown exponentially as guitarist, Smolen steps out of the background a bit more (which makes a huge and positive difference), and the contributions of the “guest” artists are somewhat minimal and yet crucial. Pulled together by the musical vision of Mank and Smolen and the legerdemain of producer Julie Last, Paper Kisses hits the mark and will stand on its own long after Mank and Smolen have recorded their future projects, of which I hope there to be many. What I'm saying is, it is no wonder Mank has put his last two projects into Last's hands. It is in the grooves."

"A new album from Tom and Sera (Ithaca, New York) excites great expectations because their folky music is simply unique. Not only the warm voice of Tom Mank, but especially Sera's cello - create an exclusive atmosphere which attaches itself to each of the ten tracks as pearling dew. The same importance that cellist Jaqueline Du Pré represented to the world of classical music, Sera Smolen has for folky rootsmusic. She too has a degree by studying at the conservatory (she teaches cello every day), but instead of only giving classical concerts, in the end she preferred to be a performing duo together with Tom Mank, already for nearly fifteen years now .

The two of them released four albums together and on this brand new fifth album, again produced by Julie Last, who adds her voice every now and then, this duo unfolds pure melodic beauty again.

Singer-songwriter Tom composed almost all songs, one or two times as co-writer. As a poet he places himself next to Robert Burns and Ted Hughes. With his narrative singing and expressive lyrics he also seems to be a modern Jack London, looking for happiness and harmony, while he is aware of historical loss, such as in the mourning, disconsolate song 'Kennedy'. The voices of Kirsti Gholson, Kathy Ziegler or Jennie Lowe Stearns join him and increase the fragile emotional state of mind, where dreams sometimes shatter like breaking glass.

In each song, slowly moving forward, you hear the magic of Sera's cello , sometimes with heavy bass-lines, another time climbing to heavenly heights. In the instrumental and sublime 'Eagle Feather', composed by herself, she seems to hover like a bird on the wing with her bow. It brings about an emotion, which could even make the sun weep.

'Angels Are Watching You' seems to be a tender caress. On 'Green Church' with tuba-player Dave Unland and on 'Paper Kisses' with Kathy Ziegler on piano, you can hear some jazzy influence. Tom sings it all, with a voice being a mix of the voices of Nick Drake, Chris Eckman and Eric Andersen.

Both artists allow each composition to breathe, while playing together. They create a sound, that will be perfect for a chapel, like the one in Cultuurcentrum Roepaen in Ottersum (NL), or in a little white church somewhere on a mountain in Hellas (Greece), or preferably close by in a room with old stained glass windows, where the light is filtered by the leaves of trees.

Once more heart, poetry, imagination and intuitive feeling are present in this album, as it was in their last one 'Where The Sun Meets The Blue.

Who said again: 'Music is Love Looking for a Melody'."

“Four slices of flavor.

Smolen, Gholson, Mank, and Last join forces at Colony.

Kirsti Gholson is one of four musicians pooling their personal resources this Sunday night at the Colony. She appears this weekend with the globetrotting folk duo Sera Smolen and Tom Mank, and fellow Woodstocker, critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Julie Last whose expertise as a recording engineer/producer has included work with (among others) Joni Mitchell, David Byrne, Shawn Colvin, and John Lennon.

This collaboration took shape when the four sang and played on Mank and Smolen's 2007 CD 'Where the Sun Meets the Blue', which Julie produced, recorded and mixed at her Bearsville studio. The songs are mostly Mank's plus two by Mank and Last. Sera’s sinuous cello and Tom’s driving guitar generate a firm beat beneath metablues that’s homespun yet exotic, hinting of smoky nights in Istanbul or Calcutta. The blend of Dave Van Ronk and Mose Allison in Mank’s voice pins your ear to delicious synesthesiac lines like ‘the sky won’t bend and the wind won’t cry’. As a centerpiece Smolen’s ‘Sarkori’, a cello nocturne evoking Dave Brubeck and Phillip Glass, nestles in nicely. Throughout, Sera gives the cello an uncannily human voice”.

Husband and wife since 2005, Tom (from Baltimore) and Sera (from Rome) first met and played together on Tom's 1993 recording 'Some Big Town'. In 2000, they started playing together regularly as a duo, clicking with each other and with fans in the USA and in Europe.

Besides helping stars and superstars shine on their own recordings, Julie Last has her own, with seven of her own tunes plus Todd Rundgren's stately proletarian paean 'Honest Work', done as a one-woman chorale with haunting, heartbreaking harmonies. Last's measured voice is a smooth, heady liqueur somewhere to the right of Joni Mitchell and the left of Kate Bush. Her recorded sound finds mystery in clarity, like Daniel Lanois swimming in Bob Clearwater's pool. She weaves a good tale of a ballad, too. In the wryly observed 'Dark is the Night', the 'beauty and balance' of ;ives 'born of wobble and shake; pass by 'as a tear and a cheer somehow intertwine'.

Kirsti Gholson has been 'honing it' since she came to town about five years ago. Her favorite activities these days are singing, writing and recording. Long a guitar player, she's recently taken up keyboards. 'Bar Scott gave me a piano and I've been writing new songs on it', says Gholson, 'very different from the older ones I wrote on guitar.' Those older songs, on her 'old demo' from 2001, have Sheryl Crow's brashness and fragility, but with deeper delvings into chord voicings and sequences, and unexpected twists and turns of melody. She's working now on a new record, with Julie Last producing. Originally from Philadelphia, Kirsti met Joy Askew at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary (where Joy was slopping the hogs) and the two started singing together. Gholson also sings in the Indian-Tibetan-influenced choral group, Prana. Working with 'wonderful musicians' from Woodstock and New York City has brought Gholson confidence as a solo artist, allowing her to introduce her personal writings, 'in a non-stressful way'. The Colony performance, says Kirsti, is 'a great start'.

Any way you slice it, come 7 pm Sunday evening, expect more than ear candy. If skies are clear the world will be, as a Tom Mank song says, 'Lit by the Moon'. That song paints a scene / where the world's still one neighborhood after all, a stone's throw from New York City'. Sound Familiar?

Where the Sun Meets the Blue
Tom Mank and Sera Smolen

"Tom Mank and Sera Smolen are so far beyond the mainstream, it's scary. They are acoustic music's Igor Stravinsky in a world of Brahms and Schumanns. I mean, Brahms and Schumann are great, but Stravinsky— man, that's adventure! So it is with Mank and Smolen, at least as presented in Where the Sun Meets the Blue, an album of amazing musical styles. Sure, the overlying style is folk and jazz with a bit of Smolenized-classical thrown in on the side, but that does not even begin to describe what goes on on this album. And trust me when I say that the meager attempt I make here will fall sadly short.

Mank approaches this album like a modern beatnik, picking subjects on the edge and presenting them with unerring touch. For instance, Off-Beat Rhyme. A seemingly simple look at an unrequited love of sorts, he creeps into the nebulous shadows of emotional turmoil, yet with a light and practical air brought off by his superb guitar and the absolutely laughably excellent cello of Sera Smolen. Throw in a magnificent performance, magically understated of course, by Amy Merrill on viola and some otherworldly voice by producer Julie Last and the stage is set. A great first chapter and the good news is that it just gets better.

If you didn't live through the beginnings of the Civil Rights struggle, you might not know about the riots in Baltimore in the early sixties. It is hard to forget: sizzling temperatures, rising tensions, minorities packed into inadequate housing (forget inadequate—some of it was downright uninhabitable). In short, the right ingredients for exactly what happened—a disaster of stunning proportions. Keep Crossing That Line is a Mank remembrance of one of America's most shameful incidents and at the same time a musical memorial to the Civil Rights movement. Solid bass lays the tone (actually, it is Sera Smolen's cello—how she gets it to emulate an upright bass is beyond me, but wow), Mank's guitar is minor chord magic and then there is Kirsti Gholson and Julie Last. Their voices combine with light hand claps to push this way over the top.

An aside: I discovered Kirsti Gholson just this past year, uncovering her very impressive self-titled solo CD (circa 2000) by fluke (I have since learned that Last also has a solo album from years past—how do these things get past me?). Such flukes make music fun, let me tell you, and I have looked for her since, thus stumbling upon Prana, a Baird Hersey-led vocal group of, ahem, throat singers and chanters (Check it out. It is fascinating.), another of whom is, not surprisingly, Julie Last. To find Last and Gholson on an album of this stature proves that occasionally the stars do align. Their work here is brilliant, though confined, and leaves me salivating for more.

Things slow down with the melodic title track, ethereal beauty taking over for a minute amongst the jazzy folkiness. A bit quieter, it utilizes the clear tones of Pam Daley whose voice is perfect match for Mank's deeper emotional textures.

When it comes to the outer edges of folk and jazz, it never hurts to bring in the right percussion, or so it seems, and Mank calls upon Edward Biko Smith to lighten things up a little on See What the Night Brings. Smith's congas and the dissonant voices of Last and Gholson help push this into jazzville, if you will, and once again Smolen and Merrill rise to the task. I have no idea what their backgrounds are, but man, they can play!

Attention to detail at times is the difference between good and great and Mank/Smolen/Last nail it on Meet Me On the Mountain. From Smolen's sliding cello/bass and use of bundt pan and and Torrens bell (that's right, I said bundt pan) to Mank's unique finger-picking on the acoustic to Mank and Last's vocal excellence, this is something else. Laid back, almost siesta-like, it breaks the mold. If the devil is in the details, this is downright devilish.

Smolen takes the cello for a short solo ride with her self-penned Sarkori next, a jazz- and classical-influenced recital more than worth hearing and perfectly sequenced here, setting up the more open and (acoustically) brash Saint Paul Street. Smolen's cello is more percussive on this track than previously and it fits flawlessly with the dual dissonance of Mank and Last and the almost psychedelic fuzzed out guitar of Michael Veitch, whose reverb and tremolo will push many a guitarists' buttons. It is unexpected and most welcome.

The beginning of Where's That Train captures audience applause way in the background and one has to wonder if this or portions of it were not recorded live. If so, Mank and Smolen just jumped to the top of my "must see" list. To be honest, to this point the album has me convinced that these two are truly out there and I don't mean that negatively. These guys are in territory few have covered, at least not this well. Mank and Smolen do more with a simple acoustic guitar and cello than some chamber orchestras or jazz ensembles and when you add Last and Gholson… Ah, the track isn't live. It uses an intro and outro by one Michael Jay. Still, it could easily have been.

It is a shame you have to end an album as good as this one, but Mank does it professionally. Sounding more folk than on any track heretofore, he steps into the surreal. Quiet, melodious and ethereal, Lit By the Moon whispers its way out, helped along by Mank, Smolen, Gholson and Last, of course, but especially by the eerie lap steel of one Josh Roy Brown. An entrancing end.

Let me correct an omission, of sorts. Up to this point, I have not really talked in terms of expertise. After having listened to this album numerous times, I am of the mind that Tom Mank and Sera Smolen are easily Grammy material. They are expert at their craft, but more than that, they develop it. At their level, I am not at all sure that it is a craft but art. Regardless, I know one thing. There can't be a gig they play where a large percentage of their audience is not comprised of fellow musicians. That, my friends, is a given, and it speaks volumes."

"From the very first notes on, this CD excites your imagination. The cello of Sera Smolen and the voice of Tom Mank create magic from the opener 'Off-Beat Rhyme' until the last etherial track 'Lit By The Moon'. Both performers sense perfectly each others changes of mood. On several songs also some female harmony voices join Sera's cello and Tom's acoustic guitar; and on one song Edward Biko Smith adds conga's and on another one Julie Last, who produced this album, sings a solo.

Tom Mank knows how to translate his own lyrics into poetic language: about segregation in Baltimore, lost lovers, for short songs of complaint, nostalgia and desire. But it is the Robert J. Spear cello, already for fifteen years the loyal companion of Sera, that provides the fairytale-like frame with bass-lines that sometimes reach to atmospheric heights.

The 'spacy songs' wander between jazzy rhythms and folky textures with Sera's cello constantly braiding the fragments of melancholy. But she studied at the Conservatory and played in orchestras many times, which you can hear from the instrumental 'Sarkori' with a classical interpretation and being of a liberating beauty.

Known for her improvisations, she has been invited by painters, poets and sculptors to frame their performances with her music or take part in cello-festivals. She also gives seminars and has her own cello-studio.

On the other hand, her husband Tom Mank taught himself to play the guitar and is an inspired songwriter already since 1980. From Ithaca (N.Y.), where he lives for 30 years already, he roamed the country to disseminate his folk-blues and blue-grass live to the audience.

This album is his 4th already as a duo with Sera. His talent lies in songwriting and in creatively dreaming away to horizons 'where the sun meets the blue'. His songs remain on that emotional line which perfectly keeps the balance between jazzy bluesnotes and improvising day-dreaming-blues. Sometimes his voice resembles Nick Drake. He also knows how to embrace the nostalgia of the fall as well as the spring-breeze in his songs.

(This is) an album to become silent out of respect for the wandering spirits on dancing feet, reaching out for a melody and the rhythm of the beat. No better words than this 'free translation' of the passage from Tom Mank's 'Where's That Train', to describe this CD."

Souls of Birds
Tom Mank and Sera Smolen

"Oh, there is so much crap out there! Thank heavens there are GREAT records like this to stem the tide!

If you brought a pile of CDs home from a folk festival, “Souls of Birds” is the one that would end up on the top of the pile. It is risky, real and pushes boundaries in a very natural way with nary a hint of pretentiousness.

Tom Mank’s low-key Lou Reed/Leonard Cohen-ish vocals have a compelling, spoken word quality to them. Mank is one of those singers who could be reciting the phone book and you’d go “yeah, there’s something to that!” The lyrics, thankfully, are a lot better than that though!

Sera Smolen’s cello takes us all kinds of places weird and wonderful, while never losing touch with the emotional roots of the songs. She’s soloistic, but always in a way that supports the overall thrust of the music. Her cellistic terrain includes emotive, whacked-out natural sound effects and high-energy solos drawn from many influences, such as 19th century etudes and Indian ragas, to name but a few. Smolen is a passionate player who is clearly intimate with the inherent joy in taking musical risks.

Though there are a few guest spots (violin, sarod and trumpet are featured) it is Mank’s guitar and Smolen’s cello that are the instrumental mainstays of the songs. Due to their willingness to keep changing things up, the sounds of their instruments are continually fresh and inspiring, as are the arrangements. There is always some cool new surprise poking its impish head around the corner ahead of us as the CD progresses.

It is thrilling when artists dig in and craft a work as rich and vibrant and authentic as this.

Five stars."

"The former album was self-released, but for the brand -new album 'Souls of Birds' singer-songwriter Tom Mank and cellist Sera Jane Smolen have found hospitable shelter with I-Town Records in their hometown Ithaca, New York. This label can call itself independent indeed, because it is a collective, run by the musicians themselves as equal partners. Maybe a good idea, deserving to be copied? In any case it guarantees the artists enough rest and creative freedom to come to tour de forces, because that is how we may qualify the work of Tom and Sera Jane. It is hardly possible to compare with other music, the only ones coming close are the Walkabouts in an acoustical mood.

Tom has a very calm recital and a somewhat hoarse voice, which in a wonderful way does justice to the beautiful harmony-singing of the various female guest-singers. For example 'Heart of My Dreaming' is a perfect duet with violist Dee Specker. Elsewhere we hear Patty Witten, who wrote two songs together with Tom. Laura Branca sings along in the title-song, with intriguing lines : 'Like a motionpicture she knows nothing about'. Of course a prominent role is for Sera Jane with her dedicated 1992-Spear cello! She plays virtuoso on every track; 'Where Do You Bury A Gypsy' is a solo, composed by herself, while the long 'Big Red Moon' exists of almost 7 minutes instrumental teamwork of cello and sarod.

It's a fascinating album, that also presents beautiful ,originally composed illustrations on the cover. Tom and Sera Jane should like to come to the Netherlands next summer and and we can only welcome that idea!"

"Tom Mank and Sera Jane Smolen produce some beautiful sweet sounds together, and their lyrics on Souls of Birds perfectly complement the instrumentation of guitar and cello. Opening with 'Happy Ending,' the duo immediately entrances the listener. The wonderfully eponymous title track is one of my favourites on here. Its story unfolding will hold the attention through almost seven minutes. At 10 minutes and 57 seconds "Big Red Moon" is one of the longest tracks I have listened to in a long time. It opens with a very Eastern motif, which I feel may be just a little too long, before moving on to the guitar and vocals that are almost lost in the last quarter.

The playing and performing on this album are top-class, but they may lose some audience reaction in being just a little too long and slow to reach the point. On "Take Your Breath Away," however, it is worth the wait. "Khaki & Bone 1918" is likewise an excellent track. You may only get nine tracks here but you get more than a fair share of good music well played and lyrics well written."

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