“A hodge-podge of studio outtakes and demo tracks”
From the singer-songwriter's notebook to the open road: SMIC's The Upside (Of Losing Everything) leaves the noise behind for something "quieter, heavier, and built to stick around" — a slow, atmospheric meditation on survival and solid ground. Brian Jin's Horizons finds divinity in stranger places still: Hawaiian-cowboy-ukulele-jazz, dream-dictated Lennon melodies, and mandolin meditations that quietly insist "the sacred is woven into the ordinary." L'Anarchiste Heureux's Le Pneu Libre invites you to slow down with rediscovered 1970s French chanson where a flat tire becomes a meditation on freedom. Jordi Farreras' El curioso impertinente rewards attentive ears with seventeen interconnected pieces moving between progressive rock, folk, and experimental songwriting, while Jack Hayter's Sucky Tart offers a "haggard, compulsive" voice that Pitchfork calls "weary and world-beaten" — Tom Waits and mates rummaging through a second-hand music shop.