Longest Year

Hammock co-founders Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson endured a series of trials over the course of 2010, including the near-decimation of Byrd’s home during the Nashville floods in May. Out of these difficult times comes Longest Year, a five-track EP that deepens and extends the duo’s trademark Southern ambient sound. With the aid of Sixpence None the Richer’s Matt Slocum on cello, Hammock paints broad, resonant aural landscapes with meticulously layered guitars and synthesizer textures. The music’s masonry is grand yet not forbidding, with rivers of melody coursing through monolithic glacial drones and sparkling accents. The title composition (featuring Slocum’s expressive string work) and “Lonely, Some Quietly Wander In the Hall of Stars” achieve a particular beauty in their gracefully sculpted lines and billowy pacing. The cavernous rumbling beneath “Cruel Sparks” underpins a delicate tunefulness, while “One Another” moves with the austere majesty of a sailing vessel on an arctic sea.