Although the Late Cord’s debut EP, Lights From the Wheelhouse, was released only last year, like much of Hinson’s work, the album contains songs recorded previously. The project stemmed from Hinson’s collaboration with John Mark Lapham on the song “The Late Cord,” a trial to determine whether Hinson or the Danes’ Brandon Carr would better serve as lead singer of the Earlies.
Carr eventually took the position, but Lapham continued reworking Hinson’s songs, pairing the latter’s roots instrumentation and dark folk aesthetic with electronic loops and ambient synthesizer. Lapham delivered the songs to UK 4AD rep Ed Horrox, who flew to Abilene while Hinson recovered from surgery and agreed to release whatever the duo produced.
The five songs on Lights From the Wheelhouse ache with a sparse and melancholic air. Droning, layered vocals and tenebrous organs shade the album in an antiquated, rustic hue. Funereal opener “Lila Blue” builds to a translucent and mellow crescendo, while “The Late Cord” weaves the sunken echoes through a fog of atmospheric distortion.
Short instrumental “Chains/Strings” offers a beautiful adagio of cello, bleeding mournfully into the EP’s most exceptional piece, “My Most Meaningful Relationships Are With Dead People,” which draws Hinson’s scratchy voice across a delicately plodding piano progression. Closer “Hung on the Cemetery Gates” beckons with an otherworldly moan of rusted iron, mirrored by the rasping harmonica and low hums that exhume the opening notes of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” in an uncannily spectral lull.
This article appears in August 17 • 2007.
