Misra Records
2004
Vultures Await
About This Album
As frontman for the hard-rocking melancholia of Centro-Matic and the minor-chord frailty of his South San Gabriel side project, Will Johnson cranks out music at an astonishing rate -- 11 full-lengths in just eight years. More importantly, Johnson consistently hits emotional depths that his prolific peers -- Ryan Adams springs to mind -- bravely seek but rarely attain. Nowhere in the Johnson canon is this more true than on Vultures Await, a 12-song tour of raw heartache and bloodied redemption that invokes joy, admiration, and pain in equal intensity. Unfolding gently and more in the manner of South San Gabriel's Welcome, Convalescence than Centro-Matic's more anthemic material, Johnson plays all of the instruments but one on Vultures' elegantly simple arrangements, with Centro-Matic's Scott Danbom adding well-placed Appalachian fiddle accents to a few cuts. This makes Vultures a more luscious listen than Murder of Tides, Johnson's stark 2002 solo debut, though there remain a few voice-and-piano numbers that also recall the minor-key lamentations of John Lennon's post-Beatles work (especially the gorgeous "Just to Know What You've Been Dreaming"). But more varied instrumentation doesn't make this record any less haunting or profound -- from front to back it carries an emotional heft similar to Bruce Springsteen's more narrative Nebraska, even if the themes and songs differ on their surfaces.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 9)

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