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    Little Hours

    Spokane - Little Hours

    08/07/2007 | Jagjaguwar 

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    Little Hours Review

    Spokane's Little Hours marks a return from several years of hibernation and a triumph over tumultuous times for Rick Alverson (formerly of Drunk) and his bandmates. Now that Low have shifted away from their pioneering "sadcore" sound, Spokane are uniquely qualified to become one of the new torchbearers.

    Little Hours moves like molasses, enveloping listeners in an austere atmosphere, intimate instrumentals and hushed guy-gal vocals. At times, the album's glacial pace can create a static atmosphere, but for the most part the songs are well-paced, even if the intent is to creep into your heart (very, very) slowly.

    "Thankless Marriage" represents Spokane's more alluring style, introducing a minimal, repetitive piano melody and weighty strings. The affecting "Middle School" slows down even further, bolstered by a mournful vocal harmony and the childlike simplicity of the melody. During one section, the delicate piano is joined by what sounds like a slowly-cranked music box; this being Spokane, even the music box sounds reflective and sad—almost out of batteries, but still playing along.

    —Adam McKibbin
    08.09.07

    All Music Guide Review

    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, All Music Guide

    Little Hours Notes

    Little Hours is packaged in a vinyl sleeve with both record and CD inside.

    from Jagjaguwar: Little Hours is the patient sheen of stillness after a short, violent burst of intention. The lingering, resonant decay of a nail being hammered into wood. A piano laden marriage of small hopes and quiet violence.

    In Church Hill, a borough of Richmond, Virginia, there is a small yellow cottage. Next to the cottage is an austere replica of a mid-nineteenth century, white Federal period house. The members of Spokane hand built the structure over the course of 2006 while recording and revising their first new album in four years, Little Hours. The record is both a document of and an aural parallel to that difficult, meticulous process. In the emotional vein of folk singer Jackson C. Frank with the textural emaciation of composers Zbigniew Preisner and Morton Feldman, the songs themselves are hinged on concepts of failure and stillborn ideas, on the conflicted process of building or birthing a cerebral image into the world. There are the echoes of insistent cats running through the skeletal frame of the house, pillaged, infant birds in their mouths, left half-dead at the foot of the hole where the stair would be. The brutal gutting of the earth to build a foundation wall of concrete and brick, by sheer will and intent and arrogance. There is the crude muscling of lifted walls that block out the sun and obscure the trees. And the thought of future inhabitants, laughing and arguing and sitting, each alone, the ghosts of these songs wilting and remnant in the air.

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