2

Personnel: Pall Jenkins (vocals, guitar, toy piano, saw, purcussion); Tobias Nathaniel (guitar, piano, Wurlitzer piano, organ, Clavinet, Moog synthesizer, bass); Jason Crane (trumpet); Mario Rubalcaba (drums).
Recorded between November & December 1998 and in January 1999.
The Black Heart Procession's beautifully bleak postmodern folk-rock falls in with the work of the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Tindersticks, Palace, Lambchop, etc. Like those groups, BHP use fragile, elegant music to frame poetic lyrics that express a deep sense of alienation and disillusionment. Like Lambchop, they use every instrument in the book to achieve their aim, from trumpet and synthesizer to sheet metal and toy piano. These sounds converge in the service of some artfully crafted, delicately rendered songs that appeal to the sensitive bedroom poet in all of us without ever getting too precious or solipsistic. 2 makes sadness sound downright redemptive.