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RELEASE
DATE: PURCHASE
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TRACK LISTING 01 Pilgrim |
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KID
DAKOTA
The West is the Future |
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A lone tumbleweed scratches a path across two lanes of empty highway. A whitetail quits its salt lick and disappears over the next hill. A neon motel sign zaps VACANCY in some imaginary Morse code like a mosquito light, periodically blinding the last of the bar crowd stragglers, who shuffle home to bed. This is South Dakota in all its loneliness. Its receding horizons, its winds, its desolation, its beauty. And no one conjures it quite like native son Darren Jackson, better known on the independent music scene as Kid Dakota. Recorded mostly live, The West is the Future captures the intensity and dynamic range of Jackson's Minneapolis band as a four-piece, with long-time drummer Christopher McGuire (John Vanderslice), guitarist Erik Appelwick (Vicious Vicious, Olympic Hopefuls) and bassist Zak Sally (Low) offering up a moody fusion of rock, folk, and country that has garnered comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse, The Black Heart Procession, and Pink Floyd. The darkly cinematic album picks up where 2002's So Pretty left off, featuring melodic vocals, howling guitars, and impeccably arranged percussion, all of which fuel the backdrop for poignant stories of loss and longing. Lyrically, Jackson tackles the tragic ironies of the early American West, simultaneously channeling the indomitable optimism and the utter despair that necessarily accompany the confrontation of any new and savage frontier. Sultry waltzes nudge their way into full-on rock songs that in turn fade out into melancholy ballads, the album's stylistic diversity building on the ambivalence of the songs' narrators, each of whom has his own wonderful and terrible yarn to spin. Underlying each of these varied stories, though, is a common thread. It's a rare Kid Dakota song that doesn't have some element of the high plains blowing through it, whether in the serendipitous crackle of an amp, the strident tone of a Telecaster, or the dusty hum of an old organ. Somewhere in western South Dakota is a tiny town called Bison. You've never heard of it, but if you've ever listened to a Kid Dakota song, you've already been there. |
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PRESS "Think of it as orchestral music for drums and guitar, written and performed by anonymous straight-jacketed geniuses of the frozen North. The West Is the Future is Kid Dakota's best work to date and unmistakable evidence of Jackson's galvanizing talent." - Sponic "Jackson's songs are filled with vast, empty spaces frequently interrupted by turbulent dust storms and winds which carry distant smoke signals and the barest echoes of cowboy campfire twang. Jackson's silvery voice flows through this parched scenery like water from a glacier-fed spring, making him sound like a Badlands version of Thom Yorke." - Pitchfork "It almost resembles the dreamlike state that is reminiscent of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon." - ePunk-zine |
