Chris Bathgate--A Cork Tale Wake (2007)

Artist-Chris Bathgate
Album-A Cork Tale Wake
Release Date-Jun 26, 2007
Genre/Style-Alternative Singer/Songwriter Americana
Quality-320kbps

Myspace-http://www.myspace.com/chrisbathgate

Biography-Chris Bathgate is a prolific singer/songwriter whose stark, heartbroken songs (similar in tone to those of Will Oldham or Damien Jurado) earned him a strong local following throughout southeast Michigan. He grew up in Pecatonica, IL and started playing music when he was 16, putting in a couple years with a heavy metal band before going solo in 2001. Eventually relocating to Ann Arbor in order to attend the University of Michigan, Bathgate released his next single in 2002, Twilight Unlimited, and his second album, Create and Consume, the following year. It was at this point that he started playing with Michael Beauchamp and Karl Sturk in an old timey-tinged folk trio called the Ambitious Brothers. The group released a couple records, Ambitious Brothers I and Ambitious Brothers II, over the next few years, and disbanded in 2005 when Sturk moved to New York. In 2005 Bathgate worked with the short-lived Descent of the Holy Ghost Church, which included Beauchamp in addition to local indie musicians Jansen Swy, Matt Jones, Louis Dickinson, and Carol Gray. The group disbanded in 2006, after which Bathgate went on to release two albums and an EP, The Single Road I Long For, Throatsleep, and A Detailed Account of Three Dreams. He was picked up by Quite Scientific soon after, and his first release on that label, A Cork Tale Wake, arrived in the summer of 2007.

Review-Chris Bathgate's songs are connected to the Midwest much in the same way R.E.M.'s early work was connected to the South. Michigan and Illinois aren't just locations — they're a haunting chill, a tidal force, a mood that hangs in his lyrics like frozen fog. In other words, this isn't just folk music — this is Middle American Gothic. And those familiar with Bathgate's previous work will be pleased to find that this preoccupation with place (not to mention loss and heartache) hasn't been lost on his first "big" indie release, A Cork Tale Wake. It does feel different from his previous work, insofar as it deviates from the bluegrassy, old-timey stuff that dominated his two previous releases. He sounds focused; there's a wider array of instrumentation here (spidery E-bows, scrunchy trumpets, and haunting distortion), but this album nonetheless manages to sound more reined in than Bathgate's earlier releases. It's a sound that nods to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — browbeaten Americana torn through with layers of sprawling reverb — and the change feels right. Bathgate's songs hang beautifully in this new setting, like rustic paintings mounted in high-quality frames. Naturally, it helps that A Cork Tale Wake contains some of Bathgate's most mature songwriting to date; tracks like "Every Wall You Own," "The Last Wine of Winter," and "The Last Parade on Ann St." (a reference to a street in Ann Arbor, MI) all stand among his finest work. A Cork Tale Wake is a somber album, but that just goes with the territory. This is the Midwest, after all; the winters are hard and many of the songs are sad.

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