Well, it's finally here. The wait was rather arduous but rewarding all the same. A few weeks ago I mentioned that a band everyone should be on the lookout for is DC's These United States. I have been talking up and ranking high the freshman release of their good friend Mark Charles, a.k.a. Vandaveer, whose album Grace and Speed has been spinning regularly around in my head since I picked it up last year. So the random weird-chance opportunity to meet Jesse Elliott and Tom Hnatow at The Washington Auto Show was a pleasant surprise (read the "story" of sorts here), and, upon subsequently hearing their promo disc...well, let's just say that the day of hearing A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden was an anticipated one indeed.

I received an email from their website indicating that the album was soon out, and so I immediately ordered a hard copy from the label. Lo and behold, however, two days later I spy my beloved Amie Street (ed. note: Joe, it's mutual) and there it is, ready to download for a whopping $3, replete with an interview. The dilemma was 1) do I save the three bucks and wait for it in the mail, or 2) do I live like an unbridled hedonist, throw out all manner of convention and purchase an album twice. Well...the hard copy hasn't come in the mail yet and I haven't listened to much else the last couple of days so there you go.

From the opening strains of Preface: Painless Elliott sounds like a socratic Cheshire on a sweet Southern pecan bough, grinning and calling simultaneously a beguiling beckon and painsoaked premonition. The instrumentation finds stable soil in a multiplicity of facetious combination: church organ here, pedal steel there, a dash of electronica under acoustic rhythms, some glockenspiel and eerie chimes hiding in corners and up pops what sounds like a children's choir. Always, though, a lyrical and vocal presence takes the musical landscapes and cements them firmly, seductively, like a feather soft sledgehammer. There is poetry and hope in the music, a strange blend of composed realism and fanciful, erratic psychedilia in the accompanying words, assimilating influences from John Prine and Abbey Road to The Flaming Lips and Anodyne.

The first track to pay close attention to is Burn This Bridge , a rolling meadow of a song that features some of the best writing on the album and the aforementioned vocal layering that comes off like a choir. Another standout is The Business , which careens around cymbal crashes and trumpet runs without giving the impression of being a hard rocking song, a trick that These United States quietly, almost unnoticeably, accomplishes throughout the entire album. The ballads seem subtley bright, the rockers are surreptitiously dusty, all portrayed with an even keel and balanced abstractness that is never expected from a freshman effort, but, more to the point (and I very rarely say this) there's not a bad song on the album. Some are better than others, some suit particular tastes better than others, but, as I have listened to it through a couple of times with the intent of pointing out a song that "you know, just kind of sucks"...there just isn't one.

Overall: A

Why an A? Because I hesitate to give anything an A+. To me, an A+ denotes a flawless classic; a Hot Rats or A Tribute to Jack Johnson or Beggar's Banquet. The beautiful thing is that A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden contains shades and elements of all of those great forebears and more, but only time will tell if it can become identified as one itself.

Syndicated from Joe Koch's blog, Of Figs and Mint. As well as being a music reviewer and commentator, Joe is a user and artist on Amie Street.

Additional Tracks:
Kings & Aces
Sun Is Below & Above