Alaska in Winter “Close Your Eyes—We Are Blind”
2007 was a great year to record albums by yourself in isolated cabins in the winter time. First Justin Vernon’s fantastic debut as Bon Iver, and now Alaska in Winter’s Brandon Bethancourt, who saw his first U.S. release just this past year. Unlike Vernon, Bethancourt found his muse in the Alaskan wilderness (rather than Wisconsin) and also went a more electronic direction. He later drafted a number of other musicians for polish, most famously Zach Condon of Beirut and Heather Trost of A Hawk and a Handsaw. While I am a bit behind the curve getting this posted, “Close Your Eyes—We Are Blind,” is one of the best songs to come out of Dance Party in the Balkans (and also one of the lengthiest at over five minutes). The song features prominent vocals by Condon as well as ukulele, giving it that unmistakable Eastern-European-folk-meets-Final-Fantasy Beirut sound. In yet another similarity to Vernon, the vocals also appear to have been auto-tuned into those slightly warped tones that are now the vogue. While it doesn’t sound like what you would expect from a guy that pulled his own “Call of the Wild,” it is good stuff. Bethancourt has already released another record since this one, Holiday, which I look forward to checking out as soon as I can.
Someone gave me a rough copy of Holiday last autumn – while I haven’t really returned to it to see how the final version turned out, it was an interesting listen. Far different than Balkans, but I suppose some of that is due to the guests that carried a heavy hand at the time.
Behind the curve or not, this guy needs more exposure, and both albums are great. Glad to see some (albeit belated) coverage.
as much as i loved the ‘Dance Party’,, Holiday didn’t do a ton for me unfortunately