The Builders and The Butchers

photo by Melanie Brown

Bottom of the Lake

The Night, Pt. 1

From CDBaby.com: “Chock full of junk store percussion, is this to be considered inspired by call and response old time Gospel, or is it the Gospel for modern folk pop lovers? This lo-fi recording of strings, mandolin, drums, “whatever you can get your hands on” percussion, guitars, banjo, bass, organ, and open vocal harmonies, is deceptively loose-sound sounding on first listen. As the listener dives deeper into the record it becomes pretty apparent that this musical mongrel of a band is pretty precise, but feels like it was hewn from dirt of the land, and sounds ragged and burnt from a lifetime of tilling. The lyrics are slyly smart, artfully sinister, and built for audience participation… and while the rolling high end mandolin and banjo pluck their ways through countermelodies, there’s that perfectly tattered jumble of percussion that sets the knee to bouncin’ and the hands together to clap along. Find the lot of players in front of a crowd that is jubilantly singing along with the backing chorus, and you’ll find the whiskey drinkers, beer swillers, the devoted Tom Waits fans who wish they could get as close to him as they can to this band. This record must have been incredibly fun to record.”