I used to wonder
Why the petals fell
But it’s a fool who meddles
In the affairs of the dead
Say what?
That was my reaction halfway through the kickoff track, “Standing at the End of the World,” a cheerful, apocalyptic ditty.
That incongruence sets the tone for the rest of the album. Fiction, Fact, or Folktale? is about cheerfully going to Hell while holding the hand-basket. HGWT has received some commercial success lately (they’ve had several songs featured on network TV and they’ve recently received a nod from NPR.) Fiction, Fact, or Folktale? has a wry melancholy and bookish intelligence that is sure to catapult the band into heavy rotation on public radio. It’s certainly one of the best albums so far this year. I’m excited to get to know it better as the year passes.
Standing at the End of the World
Finer Things
Fairweather
(Releases 9/10)
Have Gun, Will Travel — Official, Facebook, Purchase from This Is American Music