Songs for Creeps

One presumes the Places were not trying to limit their demographic with the title — and then again one hopes they were aiming for TLC fans instead of Stone Temple Pilots fans rather than the other way around. Intent aside, on Songs for Creeps the Places, for the most part being Amy Annelle plus regular co-producer/backup player Brian Beattie and some occasional help, create an off-kilter, clatteringly arty din that would in many corners simply be initially seen as Yet Another One-Person Band with a tape deck and a darker edge. But there's more than that going on — the Places suggest murky backwoods doings, field recordings drop-kicked a fair distance into the modern lo-fi world. Much of Songs for Creeps has the crumbling, dank feeling of so many bedroom recordings, but Annelle's vocals in particular have a strong, clear edge to them, a slight twangy catch adding to the air of a lost past returning to a new century. The spindly, traditional instrumentation shows up on several tracks; there's dobro and cowboy guitar on "Blessed Speed," and a lap steel guitar on "Gold to Green." But then there will be something that suggests a much different air — the steady drum machine pattern on "My Weary Eye," less remote forest lands than a rain-drenched city street at night, or the descending keyboard melancholia of "The Damn Insane Asylum," Annelle's vocals slightly treated with distortion but no less powerful for that. At the album's most hypnotic, on the Annelle-only overdubbed "Mercy Me," everything comes together beautifully, distant cymbal crashes and her self-harmonizing, plus the eerie tinge of what the liner notes call 'fake flute,' creating the backing for a harrowing tale of desperately poor loneliness. Best credit: Beattie's for "The Natural Arc," for "antagonizing."