The Dreadful Yawns, Rest

by dave heaton

The Dreadful Yawns can play straight-ahead country/folk music, and play it well – listen to their capable mid-album cover of Gram Parsons' "November Nights." But instead of looking backwards through the years, with Rest they mostly take the same sort of music in their own particular direction: capturing the feeling of time standing still, when the clutter falls away and you're left in a thoughtful state of mind. "All your life / all you see / all your plans / all your dreams / have been recorded," Ben Gmetro sings, and the rest of the songs, whether sung by Gmetro or his bandmates Nick Tolan and Dave Molnar, feel like they're from the perspective of someone watching that life video within his own mind. Melancholy, introspective, the quiet of nature, of late nights, the feeling that the band is off on a mountaintop somewhere, channeling the wisdom of the ages, letting go of years of held-in pain – that is the mood here. These songs are special – not for the mood alone, but for the sensitive melodies, the note-perfect playing, the phrases and images that linger.

"When I Lost My Voice" has a rustic longing reminiscent of The Band. There's a lovely, dreamy fog hovering over "Candles," with its slide guitar, strings, flute and a chorus of 16 voices singing sweet-nothings together at the end. That spirit carries through the album, sounding hopeful on "Candles", bittersweet and meditative on "We Go Up" ("we spent our days talking about all the things we're living without"). The album's closer is yet another stunner, built around the unlikely sentiment "I'm so bored in the summer," with saw and slide guitar howling like ghosts around Gmetro's voice. Perhaps he's bored with summer because he wishes he and his band would hole up in some snow-buried cabin, dream away together, and make another mesmerizing masterwork like Rest.

{www.exitstencilrecordings.com}