As Old Earth, Milwaukee songwriter Todd Umhoefer has released more than a dozen albums and EPs of spindly, restless folk, almost all of them recorded at different locations or with different lineups, yet each somehow a continuation of the last.
The project's three constants have been Umhoefer's looped guitars, his vivid-yet-cryptic prose and his pliable voice. And that voice has never sounded better than it does on his latest release, Two Torches, at a Place Where Three Roads Meet, a typically concise, typically potent three-song effort Umhoefer recorded this summer with producer Daniel Holter and Field Report's Christopher Porterfield.
Holter's studio lends the project a fidelity and clarity unlike any previous Old Earth releases. As usual, the songs play out like a puzzle with missing pieces, but decoding their mystery is almost beside the point on an album this singular, this rich with brittle beauty. Nobody else makes albums that sound like this.
You can stream the record below, via Bandcamp.
