Randall of Nazareth was made with a cold: During two of the eight tracks that comprise the debut from singer-songwriter Randall Huth, there's at least one sniffle just before a verse starts. Even while he hammers a wall of notes from a dulcimer to begin late-album reverie "The Way", he coughs inches away from the microphone. It's all left on tape. Details like this confirm what sort of album Randall of Nazareth is-- one made while Huth was on holiday from his regular power trio, Pearls & Brass, following tours behind Drag City debut The Indian Tower. He recorded these eight songs at home in Nazareth, a modest eastern Pennsylvania town that claims early Moravian heritage and, fittingly, Martin Guitars. The album has pockmarks, like those sniffles and that cough, pre-song movement and mid-song whistling, dropped instruments and false starts. From a production standpoint, Randall of Nazareth is cared for, but just barely.
Randall of Nazareth, though, largely avoids the hit-or-miss indulgence typical of solo projects, from Skip Spence and Lou Barlow to Ryan Adams and Seth Olinsky. Pearls & Brass is a loud, brazen, twisting guitar-rock band, so the temptation for Huth to lose self-awareness or control surrounded by the quiet of his voice and guitar would seem high. But Randall of Nazareth is conscientiously modest. The eight songs here hold their 30 minutes well, solos mostly shirked for songs that stay their course and generally strong melodies serving as reliable compasses. Seven of the eight songs center on Huth's steel-string resonator guitar, and their flourishes are consistently minimal but effective, serving to decorate without distracting. Chimes trickle over the snappy brandishes of "Climbing Trees", and mandolin sweeps down over the clutched blues of "Living in Candles". On "The Way", Huth sings over static dulcimer repetition. It's the record's most ethereal track, but he minds his melody, offering a shape to hold by stepping up and down a scale very quickly.
Indeed, holding on is largely what Randall is about. Huth is sharing a personal malaise. As though building an album-length extrapolation of "I Am the Cosmos" from the most basic elements, Huth sings of hard times borne of loneliness: The opening track finds Huth burying his head in the sand, shaping an escapist ethos appropriate for a record like this. He's retreating dire circumstances like the winter wind that blows against the splinters in his shins on the second track, or his problem with "staring at black walls" and avoiding "the sun for several months" on the subsequent track. Drug references creep through, but they mostly indicate the needle-thin brink between survival and death.
While exploring that line, Huth balances technical ability (this is some of the best picking indie rock's claimed in a while) with genuinely skewed flourishes. Like Pearls & Brass-- who shifts the sounds of Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer-fueled rock into unlikely rhythmic patterns-- Huth of Nazareth takes the familiar form of solo bandleader and twists it slightly: His neuroses don't translate into lack of restraint, and the songs bend the lessons of Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, and John Fahey into melodies that are familiar and beckoning but, fittingly, always kind of distant. It's a perfect feeling for the brilliant "Ballad of a Sorry, Lonely Breaking Man". Huth sings, "My closest friend/ But I can't bear to hear your name" over a sweet bit of finger-picking that uses the same undulating motion as Devendra Banhart's early albums. His echoing, doubled vocals come smeared slightly, inviting a hum-along instead of outright singing. After all, it's his problem, his song, his album. Luckily, over a steady, springing bassline at record's end, he realizes he's "never let you down." That is, he's healthier than the lot of this careful mess.
