One of the requirements of reviewing is to put the weight of your analysis entirely on the album. Unfortunately, this becomes a bit of a difficult task when faced with a press kit that is written largely in such self-lauding riddles as Camphor’s, featuring lines like “The substance known as camphor has historically been used... for the embalming of the dead... The music of Camphor has many of the same powers.” While I'd like to get into the difficulties one might confront when trying to embalm your dog’s body with the power of song, I only really bring this up to emphasize that this is a clear example of why not to judge an album based on its advertising. Drawn to Dust is actually a really lovely surprise of an album.
Grown primarily out of the songwriting of composer Max Avery Lichtenstein (Jesus’ Son, The King, Tarnation), Drawn to Dust takes from the shared buffet of introspective indie themes, with Lichtenstein’s voice humming through with a 60-watt glow as he waxes on about loss and love. But what makes him intriguing is his ability to incorporate the subtle lo-fi aesthetic while avoiding the unassuming subtlety of lo-fi composition, instead creating what could be considered three-minute-long folk-based scores in their singular richness. Lichtenstein trades in the simple mechanics of introspective folk for an Elysian field of woodwinds and Mellotrons set against a synthesis of lo-fi acoustics and his very own lost shepherd guttural croon. This picture-perfect atmosphere is pumped through to every song like independent vignettes of stories that could propel their own film adaptation.
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