Pinetop Seven's Darren Richard, a Chicagoan, has just that rare gift of insight, seldom captured in music by any group other than Tucson's Calexico. The opening instrumental bars of Bringing Home the Last Great Strike are a lo-fi, 21st-century take on the "Dawn" segment of the majestic Grand Canyon Suite. The song opens with cello and clarinet, swelling to include banjo, melodica, and glockenspiel and culminating with a muted trumpet. But this fleeting front-porch symphony opens into 12 tracks of ghost town acoustic pop, with musical phrases wandering as unpredictably as tumbleweed. Richard makes a point to avoid taking a tune where you'd expect; few of his songs are hummable, although many of their hooks hang in the memory like the smell of creosote after a rain.
Cinematic is the term most often used to describe Pinetop Seven's music, and that it is, albeit on an intimate level. Richard's lyrics are more like indie-film character studies. Fellow Chicagoan and country-punk Robbie Fulks has aptly termed Richard's work "writerly." In "A Black Eye to Be Proud Of," for instance, Richard sings of having "left my place where the women's laughter floats/ In from secret knowing throats/To worry men with nervous eyes." "And the Dog Longed to Be a Horse" offers this: "His eyes looked out/Through the little crack/Worked in a wall/How bright the sky...."
Richard's voice can be an acquired taste, with a timbre similar to that of Son Volt's Jay Farrar, but his range is broader, its untrained sound matching well with the music. That's particularly true in this, Pinetop Seven's third full-length CD and the first without founding partner Charles Kim. Kim brought to the music a canny wit, which is absent here but surprisingly not missed. Bringing Home the Last Great Strike yields entirely to Richard's aesthetic, which is at once beautiful, unglamorous, and witheringly dark.
Richard and Kim made their first two records in an attic over their then-shared apartment, playing nearly all the instruments and effects themselves. The pair often referred to the attic as a band member, incorporating its unique sonics into the overall presentation.
These days Kim is devoting more time to a law career and an improvisational project called Sinister Luck Club. For Great Strike Richard returned to the attic and invited Chicago indie-rock stalwart Ryan Hembry to join him. Eventually half a dozen other musicians stopped by, playing everything from violin and flügelhorn to clarinet and accordion. Richard himself added skillet, parade drums, and something called a Keen-O-Tone, among other things. But despite the number of guests, Bringing Home the Last Great Strike is clearly the product of one man's vision -- as far as his eyes can see.
