Aimlessly browsing Bandcamp has been very rewarding lately. I’ve fallen in love with two albums during the past week. First that Nick Procyshyn album that I already wrote about and find absolutely thrilling and now this new Caleb McCoach album Vanity that I found yesterday and been listening to for hours and hours today.
Caleb McCoach is a folk singer-songwriter from Indianapolis and his new album just came out on In Store Recordings. There’s a serene and at times even hymnal beauty on this that fills my heart with warmness. Sure there’s a lot of sadness and fragility too, but somehow it gets overshadowed by the peace that runs through me while I’m listening to this. I can’t say I’m a very religous person, but a song like Love Yr Neighbor has a certain spiritual harmony that will find even the parts of my body that can’t be found from a human anatomy encyclopedia. The album sounds quite bare and lo-fi, but that’s actually a good thing and only adds to the intimacy and honesty of this little work of art. You can hear/buy the whole thing on his Bandcamp, but here are a couple of amazing songs from the album.
Small update a few days later:
This album is still so brilliant and I’ve spent a huge amount of time listening to it. Heavy issues so beautifully told. Painfully devastating human weaknesses and amazingly beautiful delivery go hand in hand. Vanity is a truly stunning album. I’m not sure does it really make sense, but it kind of does two things simultaneously, rips me open and makes me whole. It’s a real work of art.
