Unwed Sailor

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Press Reviews Here we have a selection of press reviews written about Unwed Sailor albums over the years. Little Wars Pop Matters The four-note piano figure repeats mesmerically as guitars slash out a series of rising power chords, all complex elements of Unwed Sailor’s post-rock sound held in rigorous, particular relation to one another. Little Wars, the band’s fifth record, opens with the clarity of clockwork, each note clear and burnished, every point and counterpoint carefully considered. And yet, for all the care and precision involved, there is an inescapable sense of joy here in “Copper Islands”, as the volume crests and falls and the various instruments enter and exit the song. Consider Unwed Sailor’s songs the ink-and-wash style of music, outlined meticulously, yet brought to life with exuberant blobs of color. Unwed Sailor is what Seattle's Johnathan Ford has been up to since leaving Pedro the Lion and Roadside Monument. Here, in recordings drawn from three sessions stretched over five years time, he brings together longtime collaborators Nic Tse and Matthew Putnam and like-minded fellow travelers Bryce Chambers and James McAllister from Ester Drang to realize his dreamy sonic landscapes. Geometrically precise yet warmly organic, serenely unperturbed but with a bubbling undercurrent of mirth, this is what might happen to post-rock if you put it in a warm corner of the garden and allowed it to grow. -- Jennifer Kelly (April, 2008) The White Ox & Circles Skyscraper Having chased the perfect ambient post-rock album now for the last seven years, Unwed Sailor have grabbed for the brass ring in 2006, issuing their most comprehensive st datements to date. Pulled from the original sessions that produced The White Ox, the Circles EP makes for a sustained focus primer for that album's calculated sprawl. Split into two tracks, "Circles 1: Mist" and "Circles 2: Mesa," the band waste no time establishing a bombed out ambient groove, with the opener trailing through 11 minutes of guitar feedback, faint percussion, and shimmering atmospherics. When the drums of "Circles 2: Mesa" finally enter, they usher in an unexpected wash of U2-ish guitar jangle and mewing synths, breaking the inescapable hush of the previous track and providing an unexpected catharsis. The White Ox begins no less subtly, with simple acoustic guitar lines giving way to factory drones, plucked strings, and crystalline patches of feedback. Most startling is the inclusion of vocals for the first time on an Unwed Sailor album, Johnathon Ford slipping unobtrusive and characteristically languid vocal melodies in amongst the solemn guitar lines and unhurried snare hits of "Gila" and using wordless chants to soften the solemnity of "Numbers". As The White Ox is darker and more melancholic than anything in the Unwed Sailor catalog, the vocals help put a human anchor on tracks that often seem so insubstantial as to nearly float away altogether.

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