Denver-based Distance Walk is an indie folk quartet. They’re spearheaded by songwriter, vocalist and banjoist Barry Osborne. In true folk fashion, they add fiddle (Olivia Shaw) and guitar (Yoni Fine); Distance Walk sets their own sound by adding Niki Tredinnick’s clarinet and cajon-driven percussion. As the band tells us, the music has “a vibe that flirts with Irish or Celtic sounds, but remains planted in American music traditions”.
Their eponymous debut EP Distance Walk opens with the haunting feel of “Blood Red Moon.” Clarinets mixed low and right make animal-like noises against wide-spaced vocal harmonies as Osborne incants “sing to the blood-red moon.” There are a lot of criss-crossing lines with melodies from the fiddle, clarinet, and guitar, all propelled by cajon and little sprinkles of tambourine. It’s a cool track, although the vocals seemed a little bit pitchy; it may have been by design, though. Tredinnick shines on the next track, “Hush Called a Whisper.” She plays lovely counterpoints on her clarinet and coaxes several different tones from the woodwind--in turn breathy and deep, sweet and plaintive, or bright and cheerful. It’s a terrific display of the range of the instrument, and the back-and-forth with Shaw’s fiddle is a delight. The other three tracks follow a similar feel, which would be my main critique of the work. The five tracks are all approximately the same tempo and texture, so they blend together a bit. Each has its own highlights: “Come A Little Bug” has a nice rhythm figure from the banjo, and the claves on “On The Day We Meet Again” sparkle, for instance. The band is almost hemmed in by its choice of instrumentation. It’s great if that’s the sound you like, but a little more variety would be appreciated, too. They do include a bit of accordion on one cut (“On the Day We Meet Again”), which was a nice touch. Lyrically, Osborne employs a lot of natural imagery, including trees, insects, stars, the moon, etc. To drive the point home, the Bandcamp release of Distance Walk includes a bonus “field recording” where you hear whatever was happening in the field when they hit the record button. I guess that’s fine on an electronic release, but I’d be pretty bummed if I got this LP home only to find they’d filled half of a side with, literally, crickets. All that said, folk music fans should enjoy Distance Walk. It’s a slightly different take on the genre, and the band is definitely on an intriguing path.
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