Lost Notes from Forgotten Songs

Album Review

The Six Parts Seven, known for their spacy instrumentals, lay down favorites from their back catalog as a bed for nine vocalists on Lost Notes From Forgotten Songs, a "re-made, -defined, -assembled, -shaped, and -deemed album." The affinity for those making open-ended music, strung together with acoustic instruments and sparse atmospheric sound à la Eno, is apparent in the band's choice of collaborators. Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) begins with a straightforward folk number over "Sleeping Diagonally," Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse) adds his electronics and healthy warble to "From California to Houston, on Lightspeed," and Pall Jenkins (the Black Heart Procession) pushes up the piano, distorts beats, and wanders over "Seems Like Most Everything Used to Be Something Else." Even with two handfuls of stars on the album, the most beautiful track belongs to a rather unknown musician, up-and-coming psychedelic guitarist Brian Straw, whose 12-plus-minute rendition of "Now Like Photographs" goes from a single banjo and vocal to a most gorgeous and full post-Kranky soundscape. It's like the Red House Painters over Labradford with skitter-step drumming and an epic drone. The last two tracks, "Cold Things Never Catch Fire" and "A Blueprint of Something Never Finished," are the most radical departures from the band's aesthetic. Katie Eastburn (the Young People) kills the former with too much of the drama that makes her great in her own project, and Dave Bazan (Pedro the Lion) closes the album with a sort of bedroom IDM mix, a lovely and unexpected end to an otherwise unsurprisingly charming album.