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 Caught in the Carousel "There will be music despite everything"
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Beat Circus
Boy From Black Mountain
Cuneiform
"I'll set this town in a blaze/Fire in my belly and a blade in my craw," promises Beat Circus' Brian Carpenter on his band's third long player Boy From Black Mountain. Telling tales of weird drifters with crooked mouths, trigger happy cowboys and petrified men banished by the devil into darkness, Carpenter, like Flannery O'Connor before him, knows how to summon the strangest of folks from the American heartland. The son of Southern Baptists, Carpenter wisely conflates his Bible Belt roots with classic Gothic literature mores and the result is a riveting thirteen-song collection. "The February Train" suggests The Decemberists; "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" is a blast of twisted carnival folk, and "As I Lay Dying" is a fiddle-fueled rave up. Later, "The Quick And The Dead" is a two-fisted tale of rootsy revenge therapy, while "Boy From Black Mountain," which was written for Carpenter's son while he was being treated for autism, is fanciful and moving.
—Alex Green
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