Thomas Bartlett came to us on his own, an early adopter and devotee to Daytrotter. We didn’t know who he was at all. Not a clue. He sent us an e-mail one afternoon and informed us that he would be touring through the Midwest and would be honored if we would have him in for a session. He was acclaimed in New York – where he calls home – but his debut, “The Acrobat” is not widely distributed and therefore hadn’t registered. He sent a copy and we were floored by the weight of the sentiments involved with each of the songs, crystalline in their dark moods and absolute sobriety – the ghosts of an abandoned, wooden house and a dawn broken across the eastern sky like a life whimpering and an egg poached. What you hear in every one of his songs is a melancholy so stately that you hold your breath in tighter, you lock that inhalation in to savor it and to feel it working from the inside like a swig of whiskey on a miserably cold day. His gentleness could raise a family. His sorrow could destroy it and the middle ground that these two conflicting emotions trod on, dueling with each other in these songs of great power, is hallowed as sublimely enrapturing. Unique to the performances below are the contributions of one David Thomas Broughton, an Englishman on tour with the group. Broughton seated himself in the middle of the room with a microphone and a looping machine filled with the chirps from birds of every scripture and the light and airy sounds significant to the most haunting parts of an uneventful night. They tile overtop and below a vocal performance that will destroy you, knock you out of your own head and into a cadence of serene bosomy drafts, slinking in under the doors and through the cracks around the window panes to blow out the candlelight, sending a string of white exhaustion to the sky and letting the hot wax cool and harden. – Sean Moeller

First song
Honey (Doveman) [8.21MB] [2293 downloads]


– original version appears on “The Acrobat”
This is like a country song, and secretly venomous—there’s some brutal emotional manipulation beneath the wimpiness. We recently played a show at Messiah College, and toyed with the possibility of replacing the word “honey” with “Jesus.” Try it!

Second song
Sunrise (Doveman) [7.68MB] [2263 downloads]


—unreleased
A co-write with Sam Amidon. Despite the light of both the title and the guitar part, this is one of my darkest songs. Key lyric: ” Sunrise, it’s when you know the day is lost.” With a touch of “Almost Paradise” thrown in at the end for good measure and possible redemption.

Third song
Happy (Doveman) [5.44MB] [2257 downloads]


—unreleased
“Happy” may not be the final title of this song (it’s not), but that’s what it’s going by at the moment. It starts in 7/8, but this is about as pop a song as we’ve got, and gives a preview of what our inevitable future collaboration with the Matrix will sound like.

Fourth song
Castles (Doveman) [3.44MB] [2296 downloads]


—unreleased
Another co-write with Sam Amidon. A bumpin’ summer jam, suitable for mourning lost youth, departed lovers, deceased friends, best enjoyed with an Islay single malt, preferably double-matured Lagavulin. The lyrics were written during a single very productive bath.

Fifth song
Boy Plus Angel (Doveman) [7.23MB] [2275 downloads]


– original version appears on “The Acrobat”
Musically we’re most indebted here to the Velvet Underground, who would have sounded great with a banjo. The words are a vaguely myth-ish tale of a boy Persephone returning to the underworld for winter interspersed with some whining about insomnia, a favorite topic of mine. It’s so damn long that I rarely end up singing the whole thing when we perform it live—and only make it through two verses here.

Doveman