Album of the Day

cowboy poems free, by echolyn (2000): cpf was echolyn's comeback album and I eagerly anticipated it. My first impressions weren't great. The hyper complexity that drew me into the band's earlier work was largely absent and I missed the presence of bassist Tom Hyatt. But albums have a way of growing on me and that's certainly the case with cpf. The complexity's not gone, it's just more refined and less obvious, and the songs themselves are so strong that they won me over. I was particularly struck today by the World War trilogy at the end of the disc ("67 Degrees," "Brittany," and "Too Late For Everything") and how unhappily relevant they are to our current national situation. Brilliant album, as I eventually came to realize.