Elvis Perkins: 'Ash Wednesday'

'Ash Wednesday' is a fairly predictable slice of American folk-pop with moments of sublime beauty in the lyrical delivery and arrangement of the instrumentation, but it feels as if there is nothing new that Perkins can bring to the already over populated genre. It's nowhere near as bad as the likes of David Gray, but also miles away from the greatness of Elliott Smith and co. Instead this merely fills the middle ground, hence the reason a label such as XL have picked up on it.

Perkins is very clearly an American artist with some nostalgia attached to the lyrics - namely ‘Emile's Vietnam In The Sky’. This makes me curious as to why, with his country in a wartime situation that could end up being a whole heap worse than that most fabled of military actions, he does not think instead write about that. Maybe this can be explained by the retrospective music in which he immerses himself - but, as Dylan would have claimed, what is the point in writing about something that you have never experienced?

Released 9th June 2007 by XL Recordings.

Written by Bradford Middleton.