Pitchfork

[Posted Monday, November 10th, 2003 03:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

Lovitt Records, the Virginia-based label that I affectionately think of as Dischord's cool little brother (see also their upcoming DVD, Lovitt Transmissions: Volume One), has announced that they'll be unveiling a new Ben Davis LP this week. Davis currently fronts the Lovitt band Bats and Mice, but many of you may be familiar with him as a founding member of Sleepytime Trio and Milemarker, or as the guy who singed your eyebrows while swilling grain alcohol and breathing fire on stage.

Davis' new album, Aided & Abetted, is his first new solo record since 2001's The Hushed Patterns of Relief. Bear in mind that when I use the word "solo," I use it in the loosest and most misleading sense imaginable, because on this indie rock clusterbomb, Davis is aided and abetted by nearly every musician from within a day's drive from Chapel Hill. Des Ark's Aimee Argot places her sultry, cigarette-smoke-billowing-in-a-beer-glass vocals in a contrapuntal position to Davis' breathy singing; Fin Fang Foom's Eddie Sanchez weighs in with some icy piano figures; the Comas' Andy Herod duets with Davis on "Crawler"; Milemarker's Dave Laney showw up with his electric guitar. Members of Engine Down, Denali, Rah Bras, Jett Rink, My Dear Ella, and others also dropped in on this indie-rock extravaganzarama, resulting in an album of sweeping, darkly atmospheric elegies adorned in all the finest trappings. The tracklist:

01 Departure Warning
02 Time a Bind
03 Old and Played
04 Blue-Hearted Sleeve
05 Underdawg
06 Crawler
07 In Either Words
08 Green Forestry Ranger
09 Farfisa Visa
10 Just Relax, Won't You?
11 A Forced Escape Canoe
12 Double Daring

Aided and Abetted also contains a multimedia section that documents the making of the album and features bio information on each of the conspirators. There's supposed to be a hidden Easter egg on there where you can see Dawson getting buggered in the poop chute, but I've yet to find it... oh, wait, I was thinking of the Storytelling DVD.