Pitchfork

Get used to hating it, because experimental folk has pretty much become the dancepunk of 2004. Already this year there've been a slew of great and different releases in the genre-- it seems Devendra Banhart, Charalambides, and Espers will all top year-end lists-- and the juggernaut that is Animal Collective's Sung Tongs hasn't even officially hit the streets yet.

Among these names we can now count Chicago's Born Heller. The duo of Josephine Foster and Jason Ajemian have put together a chilling debut album of distant backwoods folk, remarkable particularly for its depth of sound despite the duo's insistence on sparse, straightforward melodies. Strummed chords are typically passed over in favor of deliberate note-for-note string harmonies and some proper counterpoint. The ensuing nudity of the compositions forces Born Heller, in order to keep the listener occupied, to move from one idea to another without much brooding time-- no moment is wasted on mere repetition. What results is an album that's deceptively slow-paced, yet consistently engaging for the entirety of its half-hour runtime.

Ajemian is clearly a competent instrumentalist, as his work with Rob Mazurek and Ken Vandermark attests. But Foster, a veritable American Shirley Collins, is the star here. From her first croons on "I Want To", Foster manages what some might liken to a clandestine amateur opera: Her voice is quiet, shaky even, but she manages a practiced control over her pitch and delivery. Which is important: Foster often taps into a certain melodrama that finds a face only in the most assuredly private bathroom mirrors. The glam works here perhaps to its own chagrin because it sounds quite real and vulnerable; if someone told Foster she sounds like an idiot, I get the feeling she might tailspin into depression.

As on "I Want To", Born Heller's compelling brittleness can be attributed to its circumspect broken-glass-on-floor approach to tandem guitar/vocal rubato. "Mountain Song" provides one of the album's best moments, pitting double-plucked strings against Foster's calmly delivered, yet gritty brown narrative: "We're lost in the mountains... Call a paramedic." The song's most brilliant stroke, however, is Born Heller's suspended violin tones, which, by moving in and out of key, lend gravity to an otherwise vaudevillian display. "Lulu Fellows", an outwardly darker counterpart to "Mountain Song", succeeds for similar reasons, though perhaps glosses over the low-level tension which worked so well earlier.

Ajemian accompanies a moaning Foster in the highly charged duet "First Kiss", and, whether wittingly or not, recalls Thom Yorke when in mid-high register. The other duet, "Big Sky #4", comes off similarly over-the-top, but in turn, Born Heller seem to acknowledge their own indulgent stage drama on melodically upbeat no-frills ditties like "The Left Garden" ("In the left garden, this dead bird is all I found"), and the two sparse harp-driven numbers, "I Am a Guest in Here" and "Pansies, Will You Ever Grow?".

If one could characterize the rest of the debut as creepy, then "Good Times" is Born Heller's most terrifyingly beautiful nightmare, without question the album's standout track. While for the most part a distant co-presence, Foster's voice occasionally cannot help but nod to the chaos behind it: In this riveting soundstorm, strings screech in menacing atonal unison, and Foster's own mandolin manages some remarkable intermittent melodies. In just over two minutes, "Good Times" summarizes the degree of sound texture and honest melody Born Heller can squeeze not only out of such sparse instrumentation, but such deliberately honest composition as well. The paradox makes the duo's debut a particularly interesting grower-album, as the duo's most initially accessible melodies become increasingly problematic with increased rotation, and compellingly so.