Castanets
Cathedral
Asthmatic Kitty
2004
Rating: 6.5 coughing calicoes out of 10
At first Castanets would just seem like more modern folk music to fill your flavor-of-the-month quota, only this time outta San Diego instead of the obligatory San Francisco. The difference between this release and a lot of other crap of similar ilk, and it's a big difference, is this album is pretty damn good. From what I can understand, the core of this group is a young guy named Raymond Raposa, who got a bunch of folks from other famous San Diego bands (Pinback, Rocket from the Crypt, Tristeza) to help him finish his album. Although not generally my type of music, this sounded pretty good to me from the get-go – kind of like Will Oldham run through a Twin Peaks filter, if such a filter existed. That would be an awesome filter to have. There is a lot of strange percussion, clanging and banging like a grumpy thunderstorm, and is often used as a segue-way between tracks to keep things flowing smoothly. A fantastic trait of this record is that it seems to have the ability to appeal to both the freak flag folk fiends and regular music dorks such as myself, all at the same time. A good first effort for sure.
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