Seth Augustus
To the Pouring Rain
(Porto Franco, 2010)

An ominous electric guitar hook, reeking of swampy mojo and steamy back-alley assignations, snakes out of the speakers and wraps its sinews around your skull, applying a pressure that makes your head throb with anticipation and anxiety. Then the voice kicks in; a low, throaty, gravel-grinding tone that gets under your skin with its potent rumble, but like the grit in the heart of an oyster, it’s a sound that generates a curious pull, twirling you around until a dusky pearl of uncommon beauty emerges. Such is the spell Seth Augustus weaves on “To the Pouring Rain”, the opening track of his debut album.

Augustus is a bluesman, and like all great blues artists, he uses the bedrock of the blues as the foundation for his own edifice, a creaking, groaning, drafty residence made of weathered wood and the skins of leopards and bears. He’s based in San Francisco, but after playing in various punk and skronk bands, he traveled the world in search of his muse. He met Paul Peña, writer of the Steve Miller hit “Jet Airliner”, a singer known for incorporating the throat singing of Tuva into his own music, and they started hanging out. Augustus and Peña were friends until Peña died in 2005, and some of Peña’s Tuvan influences rubbed off on Augustus. He also incorporates West African guitar styles and San Francisco indie- rock impulses into his music; influences that come together to create the nine startling tracks on To the Pouring Rain.

“Tiny Little Head” is a linear blues accompanied by igil (Tuvan two stringed fiddle), doshpuluur (Tuvan banjo), and the muted percussion of Jon Weiss, who plays syncopated lines that sound like the lurching rhythms of an old jalopy with a flat tire. The igil gives the tune an eerie feel befitting the song’s grotesque cavalcade, a catalog of the nightmarish beings lurking beneath the bed and ready to jump out at you the second you fall asleep. Augustus sings the lyric with an urgent, breathless tone, but not without a sense of stygian humor.

Every tune here is a gem; sharp, black diamonds flicking with their own sinister twinkle. If Howlin’ Wolf wrote a song for T. Rex it might come out sounding like “Slim Slam.” It’s full of slinky slide guitar, a slow, pumped-up bass line, and a growling vocal full of surrealistic patter. Augustus uses the Tuvan throat drone on his vocals on “Convolution Blues.” It’s a country blues played on doshpuluur and banjo, but Augustus turns the rural clichés of the typical country blues inside out when he sings, “My blessings seem like curses / I can’t no longer tell / The blue bird of happiness is drowning in my wishing well.” The primal, jazzy “Buffalo Eight” has hints of the Doors and the Beatles in its melody. Augustus adds an unsettling Tuvan sygyt vocal to the bridge, producing a high whistling tone that sends chills down your spine. The closest Augustus comes to a traditional blues tune is “Cherry Rose”, a love song full of skewed images that present his own disjointed narrative of love’s divine confusion. His big clanging guitar and wailing igil intensify the track’s disconsolate vibe.

Not many debuts arrive with their own well-marinated pedigree, but To the Pouring Rain has been quietly creating a buzz since it was released in Europe in 2007. Augustus made the album quickly. He plays most of the instruments himself and sings in that gruff, raspy tone that has drawn the inevitable comparisons to Captain Beefheart, Howlin’ Wolf, and Leonard Cohen, but Augustus has a style that’s more melodic and expressive than any of them. He has a jazz singer’s phrasing, delivering his songs with an understated emotional power, but ultimately, it’s his own unsettling vision that makes To the Pouring Rain resonate.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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