Sera Cahoone: Only As The Day is Long (SubPop/Rhythmethod)

This Seattle-based songer-songwriter has a tenuous connection with a former Elsewhere favourite, the group Band of Horses for whom she used to drum. Putting aside the kit she shifted to guitar, wrote a self-titled album of country songs (never heard it myself) and now offers this, an album that haunts some kind of country territory but one with more noir than alt, more backwoods than grand open landscapes, more ennui than anger.

Although apparently inspired by travels across the open plains the arrangements for banjo, fiddle, harmonica. pedal steel and so on evoke a more enclosed world and her slow vocals add a kind of Neil Young languor.

Nothing leaps out and Cahoone doesn't strike me as someone who is going to make a large mark across public consciousness, but this album certainly has more than enough charm and intelligence to get it onto Elsewhere.

She is currently touring in the US with Grand Archives, another Elsewhere favourite -- so she is keeping good company too.