Book Club - One-Way Moon (2015) Lossless

There’s a wistful, unpretentious elegance to Book Club’s sound. At once urbane and downhome, this is modern pastoral pop music that—in sound and spirit—can trace a straight line back to the simple, unaffected roots of American storysong. It’s where Johnny and June meets Lou Reed & Nico, trading twilight songs born of vacant, mostly forgotten kudzu-covered city lots, the spare, arresting two-part harmonies echoing all the way from the Georgia Piedmont to Tin Pan Alley and back again.

On Book Club’s new LP, One-Way Moon (out Feb. 17 via Cottage Recording Co./Bear Kids Recordings), frontman/songwriter Robbie Horlick practices introspection without navel-gazing, his wounded warble trickling like creekwater past the strum of the nylon six-string and the pluck of the banjo, cascading over daydreamy piano and the breathy moan of bow on strings. Further downstream, his vocal melodies empty into a crystal pool where they swirl gently, endlessly, around the wholesome, charmingly demure voice of harmony singer Rachel Buckley. The whole affair is a dazzling exercise in restraint—a stripped-bare, acoustic album where what you don’t hear is just as important as what you do.