Red Thread – Ship in the Attic, Birds in the Subway

If there is a circumstance in ordinary life that isnt enhanced by this record, I havent found it. Jason Lakis Bay Area art project is ingeniously subtle, an indie-trimmed exercise in pleasant sound. Amalgamating just enough hints of the familiar to make you feel at home a few metal references, a hint of lounge, some old-fashioned soft rock Lakis and his accomplices fashion music at once hip and accessible, gentle and dark. Guitars and inventive bass parts drive these sensitively jazzy, rhythmically loping tracks, but pedal steel and an organ give them color. Kindling Forts features a hint of Hawaiian allure; an acoustic guitar carries The Distance, a musing on those occasions when absence does not make the heart grow fonder; Sleepwalker threatens a bit of country before evolving into something like a 70s pop ballad. Throughout, Lakis vocals are worn-in pretty with a patina of grit.