September 24, 2000 :: The Washington Post :: by Stephen Thompson

For five years, the Chicago band Pinetop Seven has earned a reputation as an enigmatic art-country (not alt-country) collective, working in a mysterious attic rehearsal space as a small revolving cast plays wrenching, haunted, indefinable music. Its publicity photos artfully blurred, Pinetop Seven is arguably better for being faceless, the work of a mysterious group of oddballs rather than an easily pigeonholed "personality" or a couple of former Vanderbilt students.

But with the recent departure of multi-instrumentalist and key player Charles Kim, the wonderful new "Bringing Home the Last Great Strike" (Self-Help/Truckstop) strips Pinetop Seven down to the vision of brilliant singer and player of various instruments Darren Richard. He contributes just about everything here, from swooning vocals to strings and snares, loops and vibes, samples of street sounds and assorted clatter. Ryan Hembrey, a veteran of several Chicago-based tango outfits, again contributes work on the upright bass, but he's the only other consistent contributor.

No matter how dominant Richard's instrumental role may be, the album's epic soundtracks--each an artful assemblage of sounds smoothed out by accordions, organs and reeds--would be little more than bleak film scores without his soaring vocal range and nonlinear storytelling. In "At His Kitchen Table," Richard's resigned monologue tells the story of an old man laboring to open a tangerine, but snare drums and a haunting backing vocal bury the narrative. "A Friend to the Minnesota Strangler" lets you in on a few details ("He robbed them of unfriendly ways/ As splinters and ropes were found") but leaves the plot open for interpretation. "A Black Eye to Be Proud of" finds Richard lamenting his weakness and cowardice, his "skinny arms and watery eyes," but leaves only oblique references to just whom he's trying to impress and under what circumstances.

Other songs evoke moods more than stories: The ambiguous sounds and words often seem geared to the song titles ("On the Last Ride In," "Ten Thousand to Carlisle Came") as much as more literal narrative interpretations.

Pinetop Seven's immaculate instrumentation and stark drama verge on the overbearing and showy, but Richard seems incapable of stooping to empty histrionics, and allows the record to unfold through pure, old-fashioned effort. "Bringing Home the Last Great Strike" seems perfectly calibrated and calculated, from the way a string section vividly complements a hushed supplemental vocal, to the way the 10 primary songs are book-ended and split into separate acts by cinematic instrumentals. Pinetop Seven's two previous full-length records, especially 1998's "Rigging the Toplights," also convey this careful elegance, but it's never existed in the service of songs so pure and engaging.

Coming from a city full of bands that know their way around Gothic resignation (the Handsome Family, et al.), and founded near the home of Lambchop's busy collective racket, Pinetop Seven's music transcends its weary mood with an encyclopedic grasp of worldly styles and song structures, esoteric instrumentation, and playing so accomplished it ironically seems almost playful. "Playful" is the last word you'd use to describe the morbid beauty of "Bringing Home the Last Great Strike," but that's just one more illustration of how many surprises linger around every one of its dimly lit corners.

(To hear a free Sound Bite from this album, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8182.)