Review: J. Tillman “Year in the Kingdom”
J Tillman, yesterday’s Daily Dose, just recently released a new album, “Year in the Kingdom”. Despite being a moderately successful singer/songwriter for several years now Tillman is perhaps best known as the drummer for the band Fleet Foxes. After listening to this album I can see his influence in a lot of their music. He sounds like the love child of the Fleet Foxes and Nick Drake. Yeah it’s a tad incestuous but it makes for one great beard and some awesome mellow folk.
The album recalls a lot of early 60s folk. Tillman uses a lot of Biblical imagery (in the title track and “Marked in the Valley” for starters) as well as many gorgeous references to nature. The spacious, airy arrangements keep the attention on his soft, pleasant, but otherwise unremarkable voice and his madly poetic lyrics. “Let me lie across your crescent spine / Press my belly to the mountainside / Glorious our earthly bodies rise / Fall and rise” (from “Earthly Bodies”). Attaway to make nature sexy again, beardy!
This album isn’t all faerie forests and poetic love songs. It has its dark moments. The minimalist, sad “Age of Man” sounds like a post-apocalyptic soul searching dirge. And “There is No Good in Me” is another sleepy entry into the suddenly ballooning vampire folk genre; “There is no good in me / I possess a taste for blood / I have numbered mankind’s days / I have watched the father spare the ram and throw his son upon the flames.”
Much like Fleet Foxes, Tillman utilizes some great harmonies and unexpected instruments (damn right he uses a koto) to excellent effect. The orchestral arrangements are often pretty enough to warrant more attention (the soft violin on “Howling Light” comes to mind). This album really does sound like a stripped down Fleet Foxes. It’s a beautiful, languid, and powerful show of talent. Even though it’s his fifth studio album this will probably be considered his ‘breakout’ record. He’s definitely got my attention.
Hopefully you didn’t miss his show at Btree last night.
