Songs of Green Pheasant

Songs of Green Pheas­ant is the record­ing name of Dun­can Sump­ner, orig­i­nally of Eng­land, and resid­ing now in Cal­i­for­nia. I’ll be damned if I can remem­ber where I heard about Aer­ial Days, 2006’s follow-up EP to his debut LP of 2005, but for a while in June it sound­tracked my falling asleep at night.

Any­way I just got a hold of his new LP, Gyl­lyng Street, and it’s pretty beau­ti­ful. Accu­sa­tions of freak-folkdom weren’t totally unfounded before, but I think this release will help to abol­ish that mis­cat­e­go­riza­tion. It’s gauzy, even a lit­tle shoegazey, and, admit­tedly, kind of pas­toral. But its chug­ging momen­tums and elec­tronic flour­ishes recall Bibio, Chessie, Cari­bou at times (due to the vocal qual­ity, I think), and I swear I even hear a lit­tle Joy Divi­sion. “West Coast Pro­fil­ing” is par­tic­u­larly great, rat­tling along grace­fully for five min­utes before mor­ph­ing into a bleak, fune­real elec­tric gui­tar line, soar­ing, uniden­ti­fi­able pipes, and thump­ing, tambourine-led per­cus­sion. A great sound­track to the falling temperatures.