The Great Unravel

Joziah Longo and his fellow Slambovians have always made substantial, well grounded, records. And I say records intently, because in the headroom of Slambovia, these highly-anticipated little creations aren't mere product or media for digital storage. They are meant to be played and re-discovered over and over again, like records once were.

So maybe that's why- as a retiring child of the vinyl age—I hear many more textures on [it] The Great Unravel [it]. There is a warmth to these songs that—though in strong abundance on the band's previous dispatches—seems magnified, or (what? warmer?) than before. Pushin' Up Daisies isn't, as one might suspect from the title, a gloomy essay or sarcastic goth dance on death. No, it's about dying in good stead and your daisy beautifying this quickly unbeautiful world.

But this ancestral knowledge of our interdependence upon each other is the seminal theme that informs all GM songs. Yet somehow the enduring, working man melodies of Tink (I Know It's You), Summer Day, Light A Way, Desire, and Everybody Has A Broken Heart brings that knowing into a clearer focus, creating a sustainable, everyday wisdom.

Buoyed upon right hand man and producer Sharkey McEwen's guitar marksmanship, Tony Zuzolo's stalwart and influential drumming, Tink Lloyd's calligraphic dashes of accordion, cello, theremin, and whatever else she finds in the attics of Slambovia, and Chen Longo's sturdy bass, [it] The Great Unravel [it] is just what the band and its international drove of mummers and believers needed: An outstretched hand with a flower not a gun.

Track List:

Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)