Gob Iron – Death Songs for the Living – Sony

Gob Iron (Brit for harmonica) is Comprised of Jay Farrar (Son Volt) and Anders Parker (Varnaline) together they breath life, longing and menace into retooled traditional folk songs. Recorded in the span of five days in the Autumn of 2004 Death Songs for the Living came together when Anders Parker was enlisted to take part in the recording of an aborted Son Volt album. The sound of both musicians merge and entwine so well you’d swear they’d been doing it for years.

These are songs about love, loneliness and death. Sparsely produced, mostly acoustic but with flourishes of Crazy Horse style dissonant electric guitar. The space between each songs are moody acoustic guitar instrumental interludes that fill out the overall Western-noir feel of the work.