Sera Cahoone
Only as the Day Is Long
Sub Pop / Tuba!

Let there be rock! Sera Cahoone is the daughter of a Rocky Mountain dynamite salesman... She started - no surprise - as a drummer at the age of 12. At 21 she moved to Seattle, where she drummed for a number of acts, including Carissa's Wierd, who turned into Band of Horses (she played on some tracks on their smashing Everything All the Time). Then, the same year as the B. of H. debut, Sera Cahoone started out as a singer/songwriter, picking up the guitar in stead of the drums. To lead a musical life a little less noisy. She put out her self-titled, self-released debut that very year, revealing some thoughtful country sadness.

Only as the Day Is Long is a collection of 10 gentle songs showing a skilled artist within a tight genre. Sera Cahoone's got a very fine voice, and she writes simple songs with an edge. The moods of her music is not far from being a country version of Mazzy Star. The steel guitar is of course present (as it always is in country music) but it suits her songs quite well. Other arrangements are sparse and simple, and everything's kept to a delicate level of pureness and simplicity when it comes to sound and instrumentation. The only problem I see is that the 'temperature' of the songs aren't rising. All songs lay flat on the same rank on the scale, and in the long run I got this feeling of this album being a bit too monotonous.

That said Sera Cahoone is an artist I respect, and Only as the Day Is Long definitely has it moments. Maybe I expected so much more from the daughter of dynamite salesman?

Copyright © 2008 Håvard Oppøyen