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Ex-Gastr del Sol guitarist David Grubbs doesn’t shift gears on his fourth album for Drag City. Once again, he’s working with a neo-urban folk tonal palette, but in this case consistency seems have the right effect. His songs are more nuanced, less self-referential and more rooted in his own voice than before. And his old soundtrack-for-invisible-films instro instincts are as well calibrated as ever. Between the sympathetic melancholy of his songs and the intense manipulations of his arrangements, Grubbs has made a strangely balanced album, at once startling and familiar.
