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This mysterious album arrived in our mailbox as a homemade CD-R directly from the artist, with no cover art or press materials, just a very brief note taped to the front of the case basically saying "hi, here's my album." This humble and inauspicious package turned out to contain some stunning music. Michael Edwards, according to his note, hails from northwest Ohio, and recorded this album himself on his laptop. His music falls in the multi-hyphenated category of Christian-emo-indie-folk-pop, sounding, if you can imagine this, like a cross between Sufjan Stevens, the Field Mice, and Jeremy Enigk. The songs are primarily based on banjo and acoustic guitar, with other instrumentation like keyboard and drums and sonic touches like a bit of feedback, or heavily-effected vocals on a couple of songs. Some songs have more of a rock-band feel, while others are more delicate and folky. They are all skillfully played, artfully arranged, well-recorded, and achingly heartfelt, though some of them fly a bit higher than others. The theme of the album is, as you might guess, family, with odes to parents and siblings which are tender almost to the point of being creepy at times. Even the family pet gets a song, though it's a sad one: "Mourning the Cat" is so absolutely heartbreaking, the overly-sensitive are advised not to listen to it lest they weep for days afterward. Some semi-overt Christian messaging comes out toward the end of the album, but it's so intensely personal ("I'll praise him though it hurts") that even a non-believer has to have faith in Edwards's faith. (mike.09.06)
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