This rumbling, lazy voice, like Mark Lanegan on Quaaludes or Tom Waits without the malicious theatricality, seems to be coming from somewhere…The speakers, maybe? It seems to have bobbed in on the wind, on the pneumatic currents of wheezy synths and samples, half-hearted strumming, and occasional drums that sound less like they’re being played with sticks than being licked by kittens.
To call Paper Sky, the latest full-length from Ben Weaver, “gauzy” is to grant it a greater level of solidity than it achieves. Constantly threatening to float away – on a cloud, on a newspaper boat – or sink quietly into a lake, it’s so sweetly enveloping that you almost wish it had a little more gusto, a touch more ambition; the music can keep you on a couch for hours because it never quite rises from the couch, and never quite shakes loose enough to evoke anything more active than a reflective bobbing along, a half-dreamed trip between the cuddliest posts of your solipsism.
A bluesy lick rises to the surface here and there and dives like a scouting fish; occasionally scathing lyrics are delivered with such saddened introspection that it’s about as threatening – and edifying – as trading sad stories with a dear, old friend.
– Lyam White
Ben Weaver