Timber Timbre

As Timber Timbre (aka Taylor Kirk) moans the blues over a softly strummed acoustic guitar on “Demon Host,” his voice conjures images of an old shack sinking into the shore of some Southern swamp. The song creeps languidly along, and at the precise moment when the attention deficient (or those afflicted with no taste for down-home bluesy-folk creepiness) might lose interest, a chorus of the damned kicks in, echoing Kirk’s spine-tingling “Oh oh oh oh ohs.” From there, the spooky ghost carnival whisks us away on a journey through the dark nether-reaches of Americana. The bass bumps and organ grinds out a pulpy R&B riff that serves as the bed for “Lay Down in the Tall Grass.” Is he really an undead zombie, or are his dry, scaly skin and shallow grave metaphorical? The macabre is balanced with enough humor and exceptional lyricism to keep the listener guessing. Each song affirms the truism that less is more and is accented by sparse splashes of brilliant instrumentation—a violin here, some piano there, the occasional burst of electric guitar that does not harm the organic feeling of the album. Complex in its simplicity, funny but not cheesy, this album is shockingly scary good. A piece of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ brimstone-singed soul lives on in this little white guy from Toronto.