Pitchfork

The American landscape might not be dappled with picturesque ruins of castles and medieval fortifications, but we do have some pretty nifty relicts of post-industrial fallout-- abandoned factories, hollowed-out silos, the whole city of Detroit, and the like-- which is inspiration enough for NYC's the Book of Knots, whose Anti- debut and second LP overall pays tribute to these ghostly locales.

Traineater arrives today, March 20, and features guest contributions from quite a few special folks, including Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Jon Langford, Pere Ubu's David Thomas, Carla Bozulich, and country chanteuse Megan Reilly. Waits lends his post-industrial-fallout croon to a track called "Pray", while Watt chimes in on "Pedro to Cleveland" and Langford adds some snarled spoken word to "Boomtown".

In related news, Tom Waits contributes "voice, keys and all else" to the new Sideshow Séance: Gatmo Sessions Vol. 3 collection, out now. The disc documents Waits and a bunch of West Sonoma Country free-spirits improvising on experimental, one-of-a-kind instruments at Gatmo studio. Score a copy here or here.

Traineater:

01 View From the Watertower
02 Hands of Production
03 Traineater
04 Pray
05 Pedro to Cleveland
06 Red Apple Boy
07 Where'd Mom Go?
08 The Ballad of John Henry
09 Midnight
10 Boomtown
11 Salina
12 Third Generation Pink Slip
13 Hewitt-Smithson
14 Walker Percy Evans High School