Little Hours in Bloomington, MN

Little Hours
is
Spokane
's first album since 2004's
Measurement
, but the trio hasn't been idle in the intervening years:
was recorded in an 1800 square foot Federal-style house near Richmond, VA that was handbuilt by singer, songwriter, and all-around leader
Rick Alverson
, bassist
Robert Donne
, and singer and percussionist
Courtney Bowles
over the course of a full year. One must assume that all that hard work tired out the trio; even by the minimalist standards of
's previous records,
is an album-length experiment in how slow, how quiet, and how still a song can be and still be considered pop music. The centerpiece instrumental,
"Building,"
consisting of little more than
Alverson
's ponderous piano chords and a solo cello, is indicative of
's aesthetic, but even at its most heated, a pervasive stillness hangs over
, a sense of torpor that '90s slowcore bands like
Low
or
Codeine
could only dream of. It isn't melancholy, quite: for all the implied sadness in
Bowles
' childlike voice and
's quickly sketched, amorphous lyrics,
isn't a wallow. It's mood music of a very specific sort, an album that evokes the languid heat of a still midsummer night, when the slightest movement brings beads of sweat. If a background soundtrack of distant frogs and cicadas is unavailable naturally, invest in a sound effects disc to play discreetly nearby to achieve the full effect. (Note: the first pressing of
was released in a combination LP-plus-CD package, with both formats contained in one lovely, lavish package.) ~ Stewart Mason