Post Description

Ed Askew’s singing voice is made for melancholy. When not carrying a melody, his reedy vibrato becomes conversational, telling of a turtle laying her eggs, a baby crying in a cradle, a boy arguing with his girlfriend. The graceful, harpsichord-like tone of his Martin Tiple – a plangent, 10-string ukelele-sized instrument – makes the whole all the more wistful. Askew’s haunting, minor-key contemplations probably aren’t going to win him a wide audience but this, his sixth album in 45 years, brings Marc Ribot and Sharon Van Etten on board as collaborators.

For the World is an album of great beauty; fragile, with an eastern European lilt. Despite being thought of as a folk artist, Askew’s baroque approach is singular. His only musical cousin is Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp, another singer-songwriter consumed by matching mood with a heart-breaking melody.


Verenigde Staten
Folk
Label: Tin Angel


1.Roadie Rose (7:30)
2.Blue Eyed Baby (3:17)
3.Gertrude Stein (3:15)
4.So (3:15)
5.Moon in the Mind (6:21)
6.Drum Song (1:39)
7.Baby Come Home (3:22)
8.Paper Horses (3:51)
9.Maple Street (4:07)
10.For the World (3:09)