When Larry toured as a member of The Walkabouts 5 or 6 years ago he left a tapes with a two-day session on our desk, asking us to check it out. It did not take long for the charming songs to convince us, which led to Larry´s debut release “Flowers”. “Beyond The Mississippi” followed, a limited edition Mailorder CD quickly sold out and he toured Europe a few times. Then he wanted to take a break. Which lasted three years.
Still based in Seattle, Larry’s been working a day job at the No Depressionist’s hangout “Hattie’s Hat” all the while working on his art, crafting incredibly moving and intelligent songs. We finally managed to talk him into recording all these new songs that we heard about from people who saw him play live.
So Larry’s pulled together this eclectic great new band around The Big Slowdown – Scott Summers and Chris Cline, respectively on bass and guitar, Pam Barger on drums (who shined with the Billy Tipton Memorial Quintet), Faster Tiger’s exquisite Emily Marsh on backing vocals, Lori Goldston (you may remember her from Nirvana unplugged) on cello, sweet tattooed quy in a scary band (Zeke) on guitar and mandolin, and brilliant electronicist/producer Tucker Martine pulling it all together.
”The Big Slowdown” is almost hallucinatory in its varied images and juxtapositions, but the music is always grounded in great ensemble playing and its evocative sound, encompassing thick Built To Spill-ish rock, simple guitar/harmonic/voice arrangements, and a lot of other ideas in between. With songs of a sad and a strange disassociative point of view, one might be tempted to call them alienated. But Larry refuses to fall into that easy trap. There’s a whole lot of soul and tenderness overflowing here. A trio of songs “Hilltop Monks”,”How The Grass Grew” and “Ceramic Bow”l relieve chance encounters with old friends/lovers(.......
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