might be Danish by birth, but from the first dirgey guitar chords of the titular opener of his third album Dark Hours, Jacob Faurholt instantly transports the listener to the sort of gothic Americana hinterland that has been populated by the likes of Will Oldham and Sparklehorse. A place where, on record, the beautiful side of life is never too far from the darker side. The distortion on ‘Dark Hours’ doesn’t bolster the skeletal guitar so much as it lends it a lingering decrepitude which compliments Faurholt’s creaky vocals and gives the chorus of wheezing squeezebox and subtly brushed slo-mo drums the feel of a gorgeously meek rallying cry. His sinister side is most fully indulged on the penultimate ‘So Far Away’, which is built around the creeping horror movie tension of a tinkling piano, adding distant reverb-laden ‘Be My Baby’ drums a la Jesus & Mary Chain, acoustic twang and the muffled lo-fi sound of distorted bass, all of which eventually dissolves into a drift of unsettled squeezeboxes. For what it is it’s effectively executed, but it comes off a little over-cooked, not helped by the forced monotone vocals.
Indeed Dark Hours is a more satisfying record away from the extremes of its sonic vocabulary, combining mainly acoustic textures with lo-fi indie-rock crunch and rudimentary experiments with found-sound. Given its name, ‘Themes of a Troubled Mind’ is deceptively gentle in sound and optimistic in sentiment with Faurholt’s coarse whisper of “Today’s the greatest, tomorrow will be better, trust in all this hope” over dry guitar and a slight drizzle of organ. ‘Black Lake Lodge’ is initially more doleful in tone, but the murky bass that anchors the first half of the song gives way to the bright clarity of plucked banjo and peeling violin. While this conjures up images of rustic Americana (all splintering cabin porches, flaking paint work and backing choruses of crickets), ‘The Hoax’ takes things one step further with the constant background noise of falling rain. It sounds heavy-handed on paper, but on record it’s beautiful, with no small credit due to the backing vocals of Nona Marie Invie, the perfect foil for the prematurely wizened Faurholt.
