Folk ballads and Quiet Country

For the last 15 years or so, Three Lobbed record label has been churning out albums and limited edition records of the likes of Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Bardo Pond, and the Sun City Girls. As one of the best kept secrets in music, Three Lobbed records has continued a tradition thought to be dead with their occasional box releases that feature a variety of different artists. To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the label and creator, Cory Rayburn, the one-man label has released the five-LP compilation, Parallelogram, composed from a few artists.

The material on the album is from several artists. Aside from Gunn and Vile, there are Thurston Moore and John Maloney, Yo La Tengo, Bardo Pond, William Tyler, Michael Chapman, and many others. But this review is set exclusively on the portion featuring Vile and Gunn.

With only six songs, the collection is pretty diverse musically despite the short track list. Vile sings four of the six songs while Gunn picks up the remaining two. Both musicians showcase their take on a few notable covers of artists ranging from a drunken ballad from Randy Newman to a swaying country number from John Prine. Gunn and Vile both help each other out on each track, mostly through some sort of stringed accompaniment.

Two favorites of the album are Newman’s “Pretty Boy,” which is quite clearly the start of a drunken fight that’s moments from exploding out the bar window, and the other is “Spring Garden,” a lengthy, lonesome road track filled with catchy guitar picking, quiet tempered piano, and a dreamy harp to top it all off.

“Pretty Boy” starts off with a slightly confusing, almost chaotic piano tapping away until Vile’s voice saunters in with insults already splaying to the person whom he sings to. The piano playing is gorgeous, no surprise considering the source. Vile even sounds a little drunk, clanging glasses can almost be heard in the background. Sometimes a song can just put you exactly where it wants to put you. This song puts you into the bar, you’re a witness.

Yet there’s something deeper. Throughout the song, the piano occasionally tapers away from the story and stays stagnant on a chord that flutters around swirling strings, holding itself, like reason to an inebriated man. It’s there but it’s just out of reach, then sulks back down to the drunken rhythm that steers the interlocutor.

“Spring Garden” is a track to put on for the road, when the lines of the road are all there is to see. The guitar sounds like someone sitting on their porch improvising through a blues meter while neighbors begin to join with their own instruments. Drums are light, the piano sounds distant, like a second singing voice from the back of the room. It sounds like it could be tuned up, but it’s enough in tune that each note sounds like it’s actually a human voice.

What the EP brings is something distinctively different about albums that feature only one artist or sound – it shows the difference between writers and storytellers, moods and atmospherics, musicians and instrumentalists. These all may not seem to be too different from each other, but the reality is that music is all in the subtleties. When it counts, when it is looked for, these differences can make what may seem like nothing suddenly become everything. And at the end of the day, we all can be better listeners.