A peculiar indie rock musical, the debut album from
Yeasayer co-founder Anand Wilder and multi-instrumentalist Maxwell Kardon falls stylistically somewhere between
Fleet Foxes,
Van Dyke Parks, and
TV on the Radio, and its fever dream of a plot, which according to the press release was inspired by a 2004 jam session that found the pair "improvising lyrics about a labor conflict in a Western Pennsylvania coal town that their fathers had learned about from an old folk song taught in Quaker schools in the 1950s," is a largely ephemeral affair concerning robber barons, feisty maidens, and hard-drinking union workers, culminating in a particularly spirited town square hanging. Wilder and Kardon enlisted a small army of guest musicians for the project, including members of
Yeasayer,
MGMT,
Dirty Projectors,
Vampire Weekend, and
Dragons of Zynith, and it boasts a refreshing and inclusive, old-fashioned '70s style prog-pop vibe, with highlights arriving via Wilder's intoxicating faux-country/chamber pop gem "Wedding Day," which charmingly evokes the
Kinks' excellent and largely misunderstood Muswell Hillbillies LP, and the formidable presence of
Dragons of Zynith frontman Aku Orraca-Tetteh, who infuses the magnificent and soulful opener "Coal Into Diamonds" and the quieter, yet no less commanding "Fathers and Brothers" with a gravitas that most of the other tracks strain for, yet never quite manage to achieve. ~ James Christopher Monger