Nice Review

Review of Soft Walks from Toldeo Bellows:

I got into these dudes via Hair Police and Robert Beatty's Mountaain label. A Lexington KY free-roaming collective seemingly headed by Michael Turner, I was absolutely floored by their Penetration Initials CD-R, a live recording of what amounts to a "Thick as a Brick"-type album-length song suite, albeit far removed from anything Jethro Tull has ever even come close to touching. Embracing country, folk, psych of all forms, drone, and occasionally FAR OUT improv jams, Penetration Initials has a fragile, razor's edge intimacy about it, catching a band discovering itself wherever it happens to find itself and spinning out full-blown catharsis at every turn. Many of their other recordings range freely throughout the aforementioned genres, depending upon who shows up to play/record and what the general mood is that strikes the players as they create. For my money, this is a very refreshing and honest approach to music-making, one that dismisses the notion of creating a consistent sound in order to kowtow to a preconceived and limited idea of what an audience will and will not accept at any given moment. Soft Walks is likely the most accessible release Turner and friends have yet concocted and retains a similar sense of intimacy, as if one is catching the band in a barn or on the porch, playing a warm, subdued set for close friends. Obvious comparisons can be drawn to Palace Music (a member of the Oldham family plays currently with the band and recorded and mixed the album as well) in terms of feel and approach, but what comes out is much looser, freer, untethered. Palace was far more polished and indie-rock-friendly (at least musically speaking) than the Warmer Milks we find here, who seem to revel in a "warts and all" approach to recording that accepts any mishaps or "wrong" notes as part of the music-making process. The majority of the tracks here are fairly mellow, but around track 6, some of Turner's gnarlier potentialities surface, grafting a psychedelic, Middle-Eastern/Far-East patina onto the sounds of Appalachia country/folk-rock unraveling. It's those elements that prevent Warmer Milks from being accepted by a wider audience, but those are also the elements that keep me interested, wondering where Turner's band is headed to next; they embrace an adventurous spirit which could potentially reinvigorate much of what passes for indie rock nowadays. Keep your eyes out for these fellers.