A rare or unusual object, a curio is also a glass case used to display figurines sharing a familiar theme. I wondered if Jeff Andrews pondered this dichotomy while penning the songs for his latest effort. The Two-Part Dream of a Curio Dealer.<\/p>\n
A collection of songs simmering with promise, Curio Dealer has Andrews contemplating love, nature, silence and unrest encased in melodies that don’t break away from their quiet commonality often enough.<\/p>\n
Andrews claims the tome as his alone, even though the cover lists The Blessed Unrest as the album\u2019s backing band. Playing guitars, drums, synth, bass, chimes, percussion and the kitchen sink (or in this case, singing bowls), Andrews threw so much of himself into the album it\u2019s no surprise something went missing.<\/p>\n
Flow.<\/p>\n
The first half is a blip, listen after listen. The refrains are fine, the lyrics meaningful, but the territory is trodden. It’s only when \u201cThe Happy Nobody\u201d plays that a refreshing verve chimes in. A lilting guitar scampers through this, and at once Andrews voice is flirting with melody. \u201cNobody\u201d perks the album, and the final four tracks find room to explore. The highlight is the album-ending \u201cHeaven is All Around You,\u201d as Andrews and Uniit Carruyo sing with a wistful ache of a healing bone on a cold day.<\/p>\n
Andrews\u2019 Two-Part Dream is two-sided \u2014 one unique, the other all too ordinary. It\u2019s honest but yearning, so close to breaking away from others like it gathering dust on the display shelf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A rare or unusual object, a curio is also a glass case used to display figurines sharing a familiar theme. I wondered if Jeff Andrews pondered this dichotomy while penning the songs for his latest effort. The Two-Part Dream of a Curio Dealer. A collection of songs simmering with promise, Curio Dealer has Andrews contemplating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[304,305],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-jeff-andrews-and-the-blessed-unrest","tag-two-part-dream-of-a-curio-dealer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1222,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions\/1222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}