Our Man in Eden Hill sees Tangled Star building on their wonderfully received debut outing through Hidden Shoal, It’s Now or Later. Musically the EP toys with the frayed edges of country, pop and indie, while in part infusing a sense of space and possibility familiar to fans of the classic Dark Side of the Moon.
As with their debut EP, Our Man in Eden Hill’s surface often belies its musical and emotional interior. Through its gentle shifts and directed detours, the EP manages to make once familiar territory foreign and offset. As chief songwriter and lyricist Craig Hallsworth explains,
“If these songs are simple, they are only apparently so. To me, they are only beginning to really work when they are able to express a space of becoming... There are strange warnings and advice, mysterious imperatives and entreaties... I see the lyrics as working for and against themselves, as well as for and against the music, generating a plane of momentary, shifting affective states. There is comic desperation folded into offhand profundity. There is something depressing and defeating suddenly transformed into a rare kind of pleasure and privilege. There are secrets with nothing to hide. There is one last chance after another…”
“In my opinion one of the most underrated West Australian songwriters of all time.” Dave Cutbush, Music Director, RTRFM.
The first single to be lifted from the EP, ‘tosleepingpeople’
“Their first EP for Hidden Shoal Recordings, the six-song mini It’s Now or Later (2006), was well received. It’s easy to understand that by hearing this new single – if it had anything as good as this one. Tangled Star play melodic and melancholic slow pop. Imagine Magnetic Fields mixed with the Go-Betweens, with a dash of vintage Flying Nun kiwi pop thrown in.” – Luna Kafe
Our Man in Eden Hill will be available on February 26th, 2008 through all good digital stores, including iTunes, Amazon, eMusic and the HSR Store.
Hidden Shoal Recordings is an Australian-based independent music label whose current catalogue includes releases that slip between the edges of experimental ambient work, shoegazing pop, post-rock and indie rock. The label has earned a reputation for releasing exciting and engaging new independent music that is not bound by genre or style. Hidden Shoal Recordings was recently chosen as one of the top ten favourite labels of 2007 by Textura magazine.
Label Site: http://music.hiddenshoal.com
HSR Store: http://agora.hiddenshoal.com
