Editorial Reviews
The Singing Hatchet
Music Review:
Music Review
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Amazon.com's Best of 1999
Many of these songs begin with the simple scrape of an acoustic guitar or solo piano, but they work their magic over slow-motion time, building to majestic choruses that fade again just as quickly. Singer Jim Putnam has the constricted nasal delivery of Neil Young, and the musical reference points range from early-'70s Pink Floyd to the sadcore sound of Red House Painters. However sweet the melodies, there's always an undercurrent of melancholy that Putnam can't, and patient listeners won't want to, shake. --Keith Moerer
Amazon.com
It's uncanny the way that the Radar Bros. have drawn their sound from early-'70s Pink Floyd albums like Obscured by Clouds and Meddle. And not so much those entire albums, but specific songs from them. The Singing Hatchet sounds like 12 different takes on those back-porch acoustic guitar and piano-laced plodders that dotted the aforementioned releases and were a transition between Floyd's wiggy, acid-drenched, late-'60s lunacy and their high-production epics of the mid- to late '70s. The... read more