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When Nathan Salsburg’s daughter Talya was a baby, he often sang her to sleep in a rocking chair. At one point, he remembered a song he had taught himself as a teenager: “The Evidence” by Lungfish, the Maryland band who coined a singular brand of post-punk in the 90s and 00s. Salsburg realized he could play the guitar part with one hand, singing while holding Talya in his other arm. Though the original version of “The Evidence” is only five minutes long, it’s essentially a repetitive mantra, so Salsburg could extend it as long as he wanted–10 minutes, 20 minutes, even an hour. “It was therapeutic and calming and just lovely for me,” he says. “And it worked on her.”

Eventually Nathan and Talya moved on from their ritual, but his lullaby cover stayed in his head. “I find that lullabies stick more than anything else,” he says. “Something about the liminal space between awake and sleep, and the way that they ease into the subconsciousness.” So he proposed to his fellow Louisville collaborators Bonnie “Prince” Billy (aka Will Oldham) and Tyler Trotter that they record a version with Salsburg on guitar, Oldham singing, and Trotter adding drum machines and synths. They decided to pair it with a rendition of another Lungfish song, “Hear the Children Sing,” playing each tune for more than enough time to fill two sides of an album.

The result is the beguiling Hear the Children Sing the Evidence, an album that displays the strengths and visions of the participants while showcasing how richly powerful Lungfish’s songs are. “Hear the Children Sing” was recorded at the studio of Jim Marlowe, and features banjo contributions from Zak Riles (Trotter’s bandmate in Watter); “The Evidence” was recorded by Riles at his own space (just down the road from where Oldham made the Bonnie “Prince” Billy c.......
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