‘Skull Song’ opens with lean and bouncy guitar, the garage pop backing to Kaparos’s deadpan vocals, creating a tune that for all its rough-around-the-edges strangeness is actually catchy and uplifting, as if the band are able to bring together a bunch of disparate lo-fi elements to somehow conjure something with a glint of magic. “I’m moving too fast”, Kaparos sings, “in and out of the past / nobody living here could make me turn back”.

‘Woodclamp’ is a folk song with a palpable pulse, a steady muffled beat that keeps the rest of the song moving forward, the vocals on ‘Dogwhistle’ seem crowded right up to the mic, delivered in a disaffected drawl. The song’s final section is also remarkable in the way is manages to convey considerable emotion in the line “I’m not a spaceman I’m a dog”.

‘Alchemy’ is built on a steady strum, distorted guitar and murmured vocals that occasionally quaver and hit peaks of emotion or desperation. The guitars on ‘The Rise and Fall of Mulch’ sound very Appalachian indeed, a pleasantly hallucinogenic flow fueled on moonshine and late summer sun, before things go quiet as the guitars are plugged into a blown-out amp and the song transforms into something that’s all brash reverb and half-hearted shredding.

‘Reading the Obits on a Sunbaked Hillside’ is a slow burner, beginning with meditative guitar cycles before eventually dawning into frantic folk as Kaparos sings:

“This one below
now he’s a real hero
fought in a war that nobody knows
this one beside him
well she’s the queen of spain
but nobody gives a fuck anyway”

As the title suggests, closing track ‘Skull Song (Reprise)’ sees the first track resurrected, the melody familiar but somehow different too, like something recognised from a dream or deja vu. And like the rest of the album it’s deceptively fun. If there’s one thing Appalachian Yard Art excel at it’s the ability to tease out moments of clarity from their rough and homespun palette. I like Antiquated Future’s term “minimalist outsider mini-epics”, because that’s what these songs are, proof that beauty lies not in the meticulously polished but in the honest and messy strangeness of being alive.

You can get Fussy now on cassette tape from Antiquated Future Records or as a download via the Appalachian Yard Art Bandcamp page.

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