Pitchfork

Punctuated throughout by horns that sound like Stax hits by way of In An Aeroplane Over the Sea (the all-too-obvious, but completely un-ignorable, comparison), Aw Come Aw Wry is loosely organized around three short versions of the title track, each one interpreted differently. "Aw Come Aw Wry #5" and "#3" have slow tempos, soft, enveloping sounds, and dripping pedal steel that might be called bootgazer, and the slightly more animated "#6" joins an elementary drumbeat (that is quite possibly the same one from the Homestar Runner theme) to a gospel clap-along.

The title tracks act like title cards on the album, and from them Houck derives the sounds and themes that color the more traditional tracks. The pots-and-pans percussion and strangled guitar riff of "I Am a Full Grown Man (I Will Lay in the Grass All Day)" are introduced one track earlier in "Aw Come Aw Wry #6", and the patient momentum of "Joe Tex, These Taming Blues" is initiated in "#5". Their shared mournful melody-- four descending notes: the first long, the rest short-- even appears on "Lost Name", with its possessed legion of speaking voices. The function of these interstitials is as practical as it is aesthetic: they not only give Aw Come Aw Wry its shape, but hold the album together even when it begins to drag towards the end on two versions of "Endless" (not to mention the 19 minutes of road and thunder noise that closes the album, as if to prove some sort of backporch authenticity).

As a result, the songs sound of a piece, suffused with a wobbly, warbly regret that makes each one sound like a head-hanging apology to a particular someone. In fact, "South (of America)", with its cinematic chorale of backing voices and its pledge of self-imposed exile, fashions a refrain from a wounded mea culpa: "Babe, I'm sorry/ I'm sorry/ I am", Houck sings, as if slowly backing away. It helps that he delivers these songs in a wounded voice that sounds like a dried cornhusk, papery thin and crackling. His odd phrasing suggests a rougher Eef Barzalay, and at times his voice sounds too weak for the material, but that distance between Houck's vocal capacity and the demands of "Not a Heel" and "Dead Heart" only reinforces the impact of the performance, as if he's trying to express something too large for the music.