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CD Reviews

Mutual Benefit | The Cowboy's Prayer

Kassette Klub (2011)

By DIANA BURMISTROVICH | December 6, 2011

3.0 Stars

The foggy pop of The Cowboy's Prayer could serve as an unintended ode and thank you to global warming for making this year's fall feel like spring. The barely-there drumming drifts in to complement the delicate guitar, creating a peaceful, hazy soundtrack to our unnatural seasonal phenomenon. The EP was released this month via a split cassette, Your Loving Brother/The Cowboy's Prayer, with Brooklyn's Philip Seymour Hoffman (the one-man band, not the actor), off Kassette Klub, the tape imprint of Boston outfit Mutual Benefit's own Jordan Lee. With the help of members from Birthdays, Lizard Kisses, and Share-a-tories, the Boston contingent's A-side makes harmony of clinks and clatters. It definitely drifts — sometimes into electronic drone and sometimes into pure, volatile wind. Every syllable uttered is ghostly, like when Lee announces that he wants to be made "a partner with the wind/let me see things as they stand" on the title track. "Zhāo hún" translates as "to invoke the spirits of the dead," and alludes to the ethereal image of dead leaves falling from the trees between fall and winter. Together with Philip Seymour Hoffman, the 32-minutes of wispy electronic pop draw a surreal scene that, like our unnaturally warm November weather, transcends seasons — even the one it seems intended to depict.

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