Julian Lynch has succeeded with Mare where he fell short on his label debut album, Orange You Glad. Now I don't want it to seem like I'm being overly critical of his debut, but it showed just an inkling of what Lynch was capable of. For instance, his conscious use of lower fidelity. It seemed almost like Lynch was trying to think of ways to sound relevant in 2009, so he added that layer of lower fidelity, which was completely unnecessary. He may have felt some kindred tie, with relation to fidelity, to the recordings he studied while working at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and tried to pay some sort of strained homage to those artists, but in any case, the effect felt forced and did not contribute to the songs. But on Mare, all pretense has been dropped and this is Julian Lynch's album, not what he thinks we want to hear, but his music, as it is, unadorned. The album culls from many genres to create an extended family of connected stories, which under his sure hand, never feel lazy or mismanaged. These quietly, assured songs feel like they could have been sung a hundred years ago, which may be exactly what he had in mind. Only by the addition of ambient atmospherics and a few specific musical trend indicators could this record be considered modern and I'd wager Lynch wouldn't have it any other way. The beautiful closer "In New Jersey" shows that when all artifice is dropped music can influence you in ways you could never begin to imagine. By realizing that what his fans want to hear is just him, Lynch has created a work of hushed, comforted beauty that side-steps any easy classification and feels at ease with the world that it occupies.
Tracklisting:
01. Just Enough
02. Mare
03. A Day at the Racetrack
04. Stomper
05. Interlude
06. Still Racing
07. Ears
08. Ruth, My Sister
09. Travelers
10. In New Jersey (listen to the mp3 below)
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