Little Hours

Little Hours is Spokane's first album since 2004's Measurement, but the trio hasn't been idle in the intervening years: Little Hours was recorded in an 1800 square foot Federal-style house near Richmond, VA that was handbuilt by singer, songwriter, and all-around leader Rick Alverson, bassist Robert Donne, and singer and percussionist Courtney Bowles over the course of a full year. One must assume that all that hard work tired out the trio; even by the minimalist standards of Spokane's previous records, Little Hours is an album-length experiment in how slow, how quiet, and how still a song can be and still be considered pop music. The centerpiece instrumental, "Building," consisting of little more than Alverson's ponderous piano chords and a solo cello, is indicative of Alverson's aesthetic, but even at its most heated, a pervasive stillness hangs over Little Hours, a sense of torpor that '90s slowcore bands like Low or Codeine could only dream of. It isn't melancholy, quite: for all the implied sadness in Bowles' childlike voice and Alverson's quickly sketched, amorphous lyrics, Little Hours isn't a wallow. It's mood music of a very specific sort, an album that evokes the languid heat of a still midsummer night, when the slightest movement brings beads of sweat. If a background soundtrack of distant frogs and cicadas is unavailable naturally, invest in a sound effects disc to play discreetly nearby to achieve the full effect. (Note: the first pressing of Little Hours was released in a combination LP-plus-CD package, with both formats contained in one lovely, lavish package.) ~ Stewart Mason