Cheap Ode to the Urchin (Music) (Creeping Myrtle) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ode to the Urchin

Mood(y) Music
Ever had one of those days where it was rainy and bleak and you just wanted to sleep the world away? But you were kind of enjoying yourself--reveling in your own morose thoughts and self-pity? This is the soundtrack for that day! Randal Prater, the lead guitar player and poet laureate of Creeping Myrtle, is an excellent musician (check out the weird Gothic scream on Valentine, like a succubus' wail); and his writing is thoughtful, funny and more full of angst than Goethe's Sorrowful Young Werther. He's got a great woeful voice, and isn't afraid to let it crack with emotion, or whisper with introspective asides, or snarl in anger. I don't like comparing bands to other bands, but I get the same kind of pleasure out of this album that I did listening to Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil back in my college days. My favorite song on the album is Step In The Sun. (Go listen to the whole thing on www.doldrum.com.) It starts out very slow and slithery, then builds to a funky-maudlin jam session. The lyrics are haunting: "I'll make you sigh as we float down the stream/As we float down the stream/To the end of your dream." The song conjures the image of lovers floating down a river on their backs (like poor Ophelia in the painting by Delaroche), hand in hand, relentlessly pulled toward some mysterious end, but finding succor in each other's company. How many bands these days invoke apparitions like that? Sadly, they're few and far between. I want more from Creeping Myrtle; I can't wait to hear (and see) what they summon next.

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I was blown away by the Mystic Upbeat sound "Of What May Be"
I have followed Creeping Myrtle for some time now. I am really impressed with the way both their lyrics and sound has evolved. I really enjoy how original their music is. I really enjoy the entire album. But "Of What May Be" just mesmerizes me.

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Seattle masters of atmosphere's first album a success
Having prided myself for years on the inability to predict the future, I find I must now humbly admit my accuracy from 1995 in forecasting the success of a band I knew only from a free tape snapped up at the last minute from the front counter in Orpheum, a record store in Seattle, Washington: Creeping Myrtle. At that time, I wrote, "Fans of our very own Jessamine, My Diva, and Sky Cries Mary can add Creeping Myrtle ... to their lists of local bands having little to do with grunge and everything to do with ecstasy." Anchored by the singing, guitar playing, tape manipulation--and insistent talent--of its front man, Randal Prater, the band has since then gone through a few personnel changes, managed to hang onto its name, and built logically on the promise of its E.P.s, _Corduroy_, _Peculiar_, and _Bead_ (soon to be collected on a CD called _Kindergarten_), to produce a full-length album worthy of a daring prediction. _Ode to the Urchin_, on Doldrum Records, 12 tracks long, with an accompanying Web site and little fear of MP3, represents both a culmination of its gentle, atmospheric (but electronics-shy) aesthetic and a new beginning for its concision, rhythmic experimentalism, and--dare I say--songwriting. Whereas before, the band seemed content to establish a mood and allow the songs to meander along a progression of luscious harmonies, now it shifts tempos, employs cadences, and inserts dissonant chords with the confident logic of a seasoned ensemble building on previous work. Prater's ethereal, echoing voice and metronomic strumming guides each song through its changes, as drummer-percussionist Gary Hunt and accompanist Peter Sawtell provide gentle meter and ambiance. If you live in the Northwest and want the perfect soundtrack to rainy afternoons at the end of the millennium, or if you simply want to imagine living under such moody conditions, _Ode to the Urchin_ is the disc for you.