Radio Haw: Counsel of Serpents | ★★★ | Self-released | May 31
Counsel of Serpents, the debut full-length from Pittsboro musician Matt Gray’s musical project, Radio Haw, is adept at conjuring the spirits of the many folk music forebears who inspired him.
It calls to mind The Tallest Man on Earth’s early efforts. Gray’s album has a different feel, hypnotic and slithering, but like The Tallest Man, is similarly consumed by the shadow of Dylan while carving out a distinct and personal vibe.
Gray’s online bio asserts the album could sit on a shelf between Elliott Smith and Bad Debt, the intimate early acoustic album from Durham’s Hiss Golden Messenger.
While his own prowess, both in sound and words, is outstripped by the greats he’s in conversation with, Counsel of Serpents makes it easy to believe Gray might grow to make his own lasting mark.
Album opener “Someone Dosed the Fiddler” is a Dylan-esque dirge that sticks remarkably close to his oft-imitated style. But while such a move could prove insufferable, Gray, who plays most everything besides drums, manages it admirably.
As organ swirls above determined strums and drums, like a spell drawing unsuspecting souls toward certain doom, Gray offers weary rhymes that feel the dread of his own fraught period in history: “Ghosts dance in smoke as shots start flying / Our Great Lady tall wavers, falls / Clings on to her isle and calls, I’m dying.”
“Grand Ole Medicine Show” comes close to the profundity Hiss Golden Messenger manages when expressing frustration with religious strictures, questioning whether there’s any difference between peddling faith and selling snake oil.
As guitars and drums undulate uneasily and far-off voices echo around his words, Gray’s huckster confesses, “Let prophets profit heavenly / What I desire is earthly things / Gonna hide behind the good book / Let’s take a look / It’s got your cures inside.”
“A Change” is the best show of Gray’s potential, echoing out a tangle of effects-laden guitar and keyboard as he poignantly grapples to untangle his anxieties from their causes and his own temporary remedies.
“I need a change in my state of mind / I’ve been seeing too clearly for too long a time,” he moans before keying on the lessons learned from the struggle: “I once was lost / And I might not be found / But at least I’m not going back that way / This time around.”
He isn’t there yet, but in following the path set down by songwriting luminaries, Gray is quickly finding ways to branch out and make statements of his own.
Comment on this story at [email protected].