To date, the solo career of Texas-born Jana Hunter has been, for better or worse, inextricably linked with Devendra Banhart. Hunter's "Farm, CA" appeared on 2004's Golden Apples of the Sun, the neo-folk compilation Banhart curated for Arthur magazine, and earlier this year the two singer-songwriters shared a split album on Troubleman. Now comes Hunter's first solo album, Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, which is also the inaugural release for Gnomonsong, a new label run by Banhart and Vetiver's Andy Cabic. Professional links notwithstanding, it would be a shame to write Hunter off as a mere Banhart disciple or freak-folk footnote, as her captivating debut reveals a new, quietly radiant voice with its own strange, feverish luster.
Recorded predominantly on two-and four-tracks, Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom features Hunter performing almost entirely alone, collecting songs written over the course of a decade. Had it appeared 10 years ago, it would likely have been bundled alongside the lo-fi brigades rather than as part of any broadbased folk movement. Although primarily constructed of Hunter's vocals and non-electric instruments, these songs otherwise owe very little to folk tradition, and instead draw much of their disheveled allure from her deliberately grainy, inorganic edits and overdubs. Her performances here brim with a heightened, lonesome yearning that summon the faintest trace of country twang, at times suggestive of Edith Frost's demo material as transmitted via an erratic dashboard AM radio.
Prior to going solo, Hunter was a member of Matty & Mossy, an Elephant 6-like combo that put out an album of psych-pop on Houston's Fleece label. And though there are few overt psychedelic gestures on Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, Hunter moves with a hazy, disorienting logic on multi-tracked, a cappella numbers like the opening "All the Best Wishes" or "The Earth Has No Skin", whose enveloping folds can recall Tara Burke's work as Fürsaxa. "The New Sane Scramble" is spiked with the distorted cry of a distant fiddle (or at least the electronic shadow of one) while on the sideways lurch of "Untitled (Hanging Around)" Hunter's in-the-red vocals slowly dissolve into a multi-hued, disembodied blur.
The still-enchanting "Farm, CA" makes another appearance here, as does the brief handclap goof of "Laughing and Crying", which also surfaced on the Banhart split LP. But despite this album's loose and protracted creation, these songs all hang together with a natural, cohesive grace, sounding as if they had all simultaneously occurred to Hunter in one seismic burst of production. The sole exception might be the closing "K", which ends the album with an unexpected Casio blip of early Magnetic Fields style pop, as she sings "I'd love to sell your backbone to my friends/ I'd be your favorite cartoon." And though one suspects this to be a lyric Banhart wishes he had written, nowhere is it more apparent that Jana Hunter is her own artist; ready and deserving to be considered on her own singular merits.
