I've been listenin...

I always take too long writing about Quentin's music...risking to psyche myself out, or perhaps just over think the right way to describe the mystical ways in which his chiming acoustic guitars match the high wispy tones of his voice, thus that one closes his eyes and sees nothing but hazy, half-remembered day-dreams of autumn outings, sepia sheens spilled cross your eyes with crickets in your ears and cider biting the back of your throat...

It's like you can feel loose woodchips caught inside your birkenstocks...

Small Houses - "In The Lawn"

See? ...did it again...  I don't know why, maybe it's like huffing that last rose of summer for whatever aestival intoxications it still bears...
Just like the last time I'd written about the Ypsi-area songwriter's late winter EP (which acted as a prequel of sorts for this LP, North). Only now, it is getting on to autumn and I'm all that much more bewitched by his percolating folk brew bridging indie-to-Americana... a worthy successor to the elegant and emotive, rich and rousing contemporary folk expositions laid down by mid-Michigan acoustic-slung lyricists (be it Bathgate, Bergeron, Monger or Milia...)

Here, as before, Quentin is disntinguished by his intertwining of whispery sunset sonnets ("The Ground, It's Glass") to propulsive rousings stirring hunger for hte road ("In The Lawn"), either buzzed with the saw of violins ("The spill of every hill is in my pocket...") or pared back so delicately you can hear his fingers streak across the frets as his breathy belts quaver and almost break.

Small Houses - "North"

His arrangements are flourished with the chime of pianos, the spilly strum of acoustic guitars and the measured tumble of brushed/tapped percussion, recorded out in Ann Arbor at Backseat Studios and the Lake House. You can find it at Small Houses' Bandcamp starting October 6th - (with an Ypsi appearance at the Dreamland Theatre on Oct 9th).