Ashes to Dust
Though the gravel and dirt in his voice have earned this Iowa artist comparisons withTom Waits, those with longer memories might recognizeCaptain Beefheartas a closer soundalike. With his stripped-down instrumentation of banjo and guitar--occasionally augmented by a bare-bones band--William Elliott Whitmore taps into the most primal themes of inescapable death and unforgivable sin. Amid the funereal blues of "Diggin' My Grave" and "The Buzzards Won't Cry" and the dying farmer's request on the closing "Porchlight" (punctuated with a tubercular-sounding cough as a coda), the comparatively tender "When Push Comes to Love" brings melodic relief and the classic country waltz  "Sorest of Eyes" has a hint of a lilt. Otherwise, the artistry is as bleak as the Samuel Beckett epigram on the liner, as the music takes a cold, hard look at mortality and evokes the slimmest hope of redemption.--Don McLeese