Hollow Deck’s Hobson’s Choice was dug out of sold-out tape obscurity for this small vinyl run of 300, and your instincts will tell you right away: Yes, yes, it makes sense that someone would want to mine this curious little nugget, maybe even securing another album or two in the future from these crazy-talented catz. It’s not so much that HD create folk music as it is they air out their issues with the artform, bending it and stretching its parameters to suit their whim. For every spiritual, despite the title, melodic folk exercise like “Eat It,” there’s a drunken robot buffalo like “Hurrah” wandering around, sounding almost like it’s waiting to be shot or jailed. Over eight minutes this tune manages to both enlighten and insult the listener, slapping around slowed-down voice samples and milking pitch-bends (I think that’s what that is) to the absolute bone. From there you get a little bit of everything; a pinch of Jandek, even. A few of the more complicated vocal parts almost remind me of The Pierces, too, which is weird; there’s the potential for a pop solution to Hollow Deck’s problems if they one day desire that. But something (namely: Hobson’s Choice) tells me they’ll be much happier operating on the fringes, wetting their slide whistles, tympani, and queer casios with abandon like they’s from Vermont or something (are they from Vermont or something?). Like MV + EE before them, Hollow Deck’re good, down-to-earth folk who happen to want to carve folk a new anus. As heinous as that sounds, you’ll want to hear them accomplish just that if you value a little hushed melodic (often in the loosest sense of the term) madness with a twist of blurriness to make you feel nice and drunken when you haven’t slurped a single sip up that ridiculous beard of yours. Clean up, fella.
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