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The River Bends… And Flows into the Sea
Outstanding mellow rock, country-tinged, folky. Early Wilco/Tweedy, Sufjan Stevens, Red House Painters, Low. Philadelphia’s Witmer Denison steps up from Sing/Songwriter to full band sound (released as “The River Bends”). And it sounds fantastic. Beautiful melodies, guitars, lap steel, and droney keyboards, understated percussion, no-frails vox, slightly nasal but nice. Lots of songs about seasons, but I guess that’s how it is in the northeast. Lyrics, Romantic but realistic and unassuming.
Play every single track, but especially track 1. Start with: 1, 11, 3, 7, 9, 6. No FCC’s.

1. *** Heartbreaking, beautiful tune, slight distortion, perfect, so perfect. ***
2. Mid tempo guitar pick, starts rocking, you have to sway in the chorus.
3. * This is so Mark Kozelek… love and the great outdoors. Acoustic strum throughout, wonderful. *
4. Quiet picking, very mellow, classic ballad about Philadelphia(!)
5. Mid tempo, swinging.
6. * Dark, sadder feeling. 22 and don’t know what to do. *
7. * Gentle, sparse picking, keyboards drone, calm yet strained vox (it will make sense if you listen). Briefly turns electric, louder *
8. Steel guitar, starts sparse and slow, but picks up with calm strumming on the electric.
9. * Similarly, lap steel and quiet verses, quite louder on the chorus, great track. *
10. Minimal piano ballad, guitars pick it up, gloomy.
11. ** Build to Spill power ballad. Starts quiet, acoustic, but power chords join in the pick the beautiful tune, repeat and repeat and repeat… **