Lazarus ‘Like Trees We Grow Up To Be Satellites’
(Something in Construction)

This debut album from San Francisco based Lazarus could have been a great sweet ‘n’ sour EP of earnest modern folk. However it is reduced to an interminable trudge through mildly depressing and sorrowful electro-acoustic Americana that’s simply far too pedestrian and monochrome to last long in the memory. The problem with this record is that it’s just too long and too damn ‘the same’ all the way through. On and on and on…

Lazarus are stuck between two stools really. One foot is hovering over the crusty surface of twisted folk and the other is firmly placed in the cement of the miserabilist torch song. The problem here is not the playing, which is exemplary, or the musical world they want to live in, but the total lack of dynamism and pacing. Plod, plod, plod…

Guaranteed to pack out the local folk club, but for the music lover with a more varied and discerning palette this is difficult to swallow and easy to ignore. The Tindersticks, The Pernice Brothers and Devendra Banhart do it all stacks better. Great title though….

words: Gary Ramsay