Headwater
Lay You Down
Nowhere Town Records

I'm glad to claim that Lay You Down is the best damn record I've heard so far this year. I have to admit it came kind of out of the blue. Headwater being a new name to me, but luckily not any more.

They started out as a duo and went in to record their first album (My Old Friend, 2006) but came out with eight songs and a five-piece band. This is their second album, and man they do sound like a solid band. Like any band of great instrumentalists, they know to appreciate the silence in between and the power that comes from making space for the sparse. And that is exactly what they do, making space for each instrument to speak reason. Which again is a bad idea if you don't handle your instrument as well as Headwater does.

But, as with all good music, at the bottom of it all are good songs. Written and sung by Jonas Shandel and Matt Bryant, they vary between going on a freight train and dwelling in the dungeons. Altogether they can make you dance and cry - although not as schizophrenic as it might sound. And that is the beauty of it. They play around in genres and that way create their own. As if they've found a way to make everyone in the band happy. Well, at least it makes me happy.

Copyright © 2009 Anders Svendsen