O’Death
Head Home
(Ernest Jennings Record Co., 2007)

The first words uttered and then repeated on Brooklyn’s O’Death’s second LP (yet first that I’ve encountered) are “lay me down to rest,” in which the song eventually breaks down into this dark, yielding and howling Tom Waits sort of hootenanny. Um, yeah!

I guess I should mention that it might be considered weird that a band from Brooklyn would be creating southern gothic music fueled by more than a few rounds of whiskey shots and fiddle. But, alas, that’s the beauty of Brooklyn—a place representative of more collective cultures than anywhere else in the world—spend any time there and you know it isn’t really weird at all. I’ve experienced a few jug bands there in my day (a night complete with topless women…uh, get it? Jugs.), and the entire room was unanimously into it.

This band of five don banjo, fiddle, a broken down drum set, guitars, ukuleles and trombones, and take all of that and turn it on its head for a foot stompin’ ride through their twisted take on the American landscape. Some crazy culmination of southern country, gothic punk, bluegrass and folk… with a primal sort of Man Man-like delivery. Luckily, the album presents songs with many parts that ebb and flow, so that for all the frenetic rebellion felt in its most fast-paced moments (“Allie Mae Reynolds”), we are also able, more often than what was expected from the first two tracks, to recline on the front porch of our memory for a breather (“O Lee O”). And, the slower moments are these pockets of space where you can experience other worldliness at play. It’s these moments that give the music more depth and exercise more muscle than just a bunch of hootin’ and hollerin’.

Head Home, while certainly an enjoyable listen through the speakers, is a gateway tool to getting out there to see O’Death live when they come around to your town. For all the hoedown-about-to-go-apeshit intensity of this album, I have a feeling there’s no way they’d disappoint.

Listen: “Down To Rest“  [at myspace.com]