Run On Sentence: Oh When the wind comes down (hush records)

[RAMSHACKLE FOLK] At times restrained, often rambling, and seemingly endless in its narrative scope, Run on Sentence's debut Oh When the Wind Comes Down is a modern-day folk record littered with signposts from the past: Alpine yodeling, Appalachian mountain ballads and a Jeff Magnum-like sense of awe. The work of songwriter Dustin Hamman and a rotating cast of up to 12 friends (including co-producer Nick Jaina), the record begins and ends with two elaborate, complex tales (the "Carrie" and "The Afterlife" suites) and finds room to explore Latin rhythms, odd time signatures, and heaps of first-person storytelling in between.

Oh When the Wind Comes Down is only grounded, then, by Hamman's voice; whether he's hitting every high falsetto note or cracking the upper register and testing any unwilling listener's patience with the yodel-ay-eee-oooo outro in "Carrie Pt. 1," it's a profoundly unique aesthetic vision. And, while some parts (the jazzy New Orleans swing of "Stonewall" in particular) take a bit of getting used to, "The Afterlife Pt. 1"—the record's unquestioned masterpiece—takes any notion of a trope and throws it out the train-car window. Sounding eerily like something off Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the song condenses every disparate path of Hamman's songwriting, distilling the crystal-clear melodies into a slow, mournful and timeless ballad. .