Daniel McBride builds these thirteen pieces from overlapping tempos and close-voiced chords that shift under fingerpicked guitar and layered vocal takes. The arrangements keep doubling back, a phrase ends, then reappears in a different metre or with the harmony rewritten underneath. It comes from grief, according to the dedications, and that shows in how the music refuses to settle. One moment you get math rock precision, the next a folk melody that barely holds together.
McBride plays almost everything himself, recording at home before James Goldsmith mixed it and Mike Gibson mastered. The production stays dry and close. You hear fingers on strings, breath between words. Indira Force adds harp to the closing track, which opens the sound out after twelve pieces of tightly wound interiors. The two Sensemaking tracks and the pair of Interstitials work as structural breaks, but they are not ambient interludes, they keep the same rhythmic knots as the songs around them.
This will appeal to people who like their folk music difficult and their experimental music emotionally direct. It does not make things easy, but it earns the attention it asks for.
