Aw Come Aw Wry

Truly great songwriters hit people in a particular way - for some it's the sound of Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum or Palace's Will Oldham. Others hear that extraordinary something in Bob Dylan or Neil Young - it can't easily be defined and is a power possessed by only the rarest of songwriters. It is bold to say, but 26-year-old Matthew Houck is one of them. As with the illustrious names above, behind Houck's songs lies nothing but the raw compulsion to write and play them, the fateful, joyful yearning to connect - the intuition that making music, for Houck, is inevitable. Aw Come Aw Wry moves the band's loose, ever-shifting arrangements away from the sparse and melodic and toward the rowdy and unhinged, at times conjuring a free, revival-tent spirit awash in homespun orchestrations and brushed with spiritual and psychedelic undertones.