other titles...
See also...
1. Genevieve
2. Town Lights Fade
3. Running Hot
4. Buttercup
5. Laments
6. Haunted Nights
7. The Cranes
8. Last Train Home
Chris Eckman
The Land We Knew The Best
glitterhouse
Eckman's gravelly baritone sets the tone for this roughly hewn but deeply beautiful collection of songs which climb thematic mountains, navigate cerebral cities, and disappear into the haunting night just as you let them in.
Chris Eckman is one of those songwriters with the alchemist’s touch. He’s proved it over the years as the songwriter of the Seattle rock-folk band, The Walkabouts, as well as across a lauded six album solo career. Time has passed, but maybe more importantly, the geography has altered. The songs on 'The Land We Knew the Best' aren’t populated by the broken people and tumbledown, raw landscapes of the American West that has been the setting for much of his previous work. He’s lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia for many years, and it’s seeped into his conscio usness. Not just the city, but also the mountainous and thickly forested nature that surrounds it. 'The Land We Knew the Best' has its own distinctive landscape. Its own emotional geography. The change isn’t just apparent in the lyrics; it suffuses the music, too.
The sound is fuller, warmer and more textured, creating a very different frame for the songs. There’s a rough-hewn and undeniable beauty in the varied sonic and emotional textures found on 'The Land We Knew the Best': dark ambiance, distorted crescendos, deep-voiced storytelling and moments of hard earned stillness. It is an album of memory and place; heart and hope. It is an immersive, vivid walk through the landscapes that Chris Eckman knows the best. "One of America’s finest songwriters...emotional depths with an opalescent beauty." - Americana UK.