Hawk Medicine
Label: Temporary Residence Ltd.
Length: LP
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Hawk Medicine
William Trevor Montgomery has a sunnier disposition these days, but while he gained a band, his songs shed weight. In 2004, the climate that the songwriter detailed as Lazarus on his touching Like Trees We Grow Up to Be Satellites (The Backwards America) was extraordinary grief. Although it was a studio recording, Like Trees maintained a powerfully dampened but dense lo-fi bedroom mood throughout, with gruff acoustic guitar bearing down on every anguished sentiment. Hawk Medicine, his third album as Lazarus, lands Montgomery in a misguided leading role. Random guitar clinks linger behind his vocals, which bounce off the walls of what sounds like an empty gym. A celebratory pace surfaces in “Sewest” when faint pick-slides and frail verses find their way to full-band kick-in, but most arrangements are bare. The slowly churning organ-tinged instrumental “Disco” breaks any sullen mood that might follow “Sky of the Tall Sun,” where the host struggles with the massive vocal reverb that amplifies his already existing troubles. He’s more positive on Hawk Medicine, but it’ll take more albums (and less reverb) to work it out.
This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2007.