Joshua Burkett

A VDSQ Monday night, with leftfield folk, punk bluegrass, and weirdwave guitar in equal measure from Joshua Burkett, Ralph White and Village of Spaces.

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If You Can't Wander is the seventh LP Josh has released since 1995 and it may be his quietest, most songwriterly effort yet. Of course there are the occasional bloops of electronics (or what have you) that tend to pop up in his much of work, but the bulk of the sound here is acoustic guitar and solo vocals, presented in a very intimate fashion. Everything is mic'd so closely, there are times where you'll be able to close your eyes and imagine Josh is sitting right in your goddamn lap. By personal choice, Burkett often seems to favor English models for his picking, with lightly embellished melody lines that sound as though they were recorded directly onto Bill Leader's four-track. But his vocals, especially on this album, are extremely casual in both delivery and harmonic resolution, appearing to follow something more akin to the American loner-folk model. Reading along with the lyric booklet provided, I was struck by the words in a way I haven't always been on Josh's previous albums. On earlier sides, the vocals almost felt like a nearly-hidden element of the overall sound more than anything with very specific meaning. But reading them affords listeners an entry point to whole new layers of their strange greatness. Byron Coley 2022

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Ralph White was a member of well-loved punk bluegrass outfit Bad Livers but his solo work is possessed of a much more lonesome spark, exaggerating the implied drone at the heart of the music of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers. White plays wooden six-string banjo, violin, accordion and kalimba and his voice has a high, eerie quality to it that allows it to blend with the various primitive strategies that the music employs to reanimate traditional and original material alike. The use of kalimba situates aspects of the sound in some avant hillbilly fourth world, while the combination of dense matrices of string and White's transporting vocal is extremely psychedelic.

David Keenan - THE WIRE (Dec 3, 2008)

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'Brilliant new album from Village of Spaces, a combo once described as, “Dan and his raggletaggle band of hippies” by Michael Hurley, a guy who knows about such things. The Dan in question is Dan Beckman-Moon who, along with his partner Amy Moon Offerman-Sims, is the central core of this constantly evolving, psychedelically inclined, folk juggernaut. V.O.S. has had many name variations and members in the 17 years since Dan and Amy formed this more perfect union, but all of their recordings are possessed of a singular sense of rurality and otherness. They've been based everywhere from Santa Cruz to New Orleans to Belfast (Maine), sounds like some unreleased Raccoon label album, with the same mix of straight and weird that whole crew managed to conjure up so effortlessly. Players on Shaped include members of Big Blood, Amps for Christ, Dire Wolves, and all manner of stylistic drifters. Sorta like what Hurley said, but better. A true feast of the mind, ears and soul. Dig in now or be forever hungry for something you can't quite put your finger on. Mystery is rarely served up so neat.' – Byron Coley

This is an age 21+ event

2220 Arts + Archives

Joshua Burkett, Village of Spaces, Ralph White

Village of Spaces - Long View

Joshua Burkett

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