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Ride Out The Dark

Houndstooth were a band based in Portland, Oregon, who released two albums in 2013 and '14. Ride Out The Dark being the first and the better of the two. Their music, according to a discogs commenter was "somewhere between dream pop and '90s neo-psychedelia, Mazzy Star and Cowboy Junkies, Neil Young and girl group...but clearly from the 21st Century" which seems as good a characterisation of it as any I could come up with.

It's a fairly standard mix of guitars, bass, drums and keyboards, but it's one which comes together beautifully well. The resultant sound is a warm & relaxed one. For me, putting it on is like donning a favourite item of comfortable old clothing: it feels good just to hear them play. The lead instruments are Katie Bernstein's voice (which at times resembles Debbie Harry's) and John Gnorski's wonderfully fluid lead guitar. Credit is due too to drummer Graeme Gibson, who both kept time and produced, doing both with great aplomb.

I bought both their albums on CD back in '14 or '15. Ride Out The Dark is a well-packaged item - a thick card gatefold with a card inner-sleeve. The cover paintings are Gnorski's handiwork. There isn't a bad song on the disc - I'm particularly fond of 'Canary Island', 'New Illusion' and 'Wheel on Fire'. This has been an album I've returned to repeatedly over the past eight years, and its appeal has not faded at all in that time.

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