Legendary Creatures The Burgundy Demos. Woodland nymphs escaped from the motor city. if you had seen the Life Without People episode that focused on Detroit you may have noticed that they did not need to do any special effect alterations. The city is mainly empty. Soon it will return to prairie, the buffalo will roam, the timber wolves will swim across from Isle Royale, the Moose will nudge up next to the Black Bears that will move out from their marshmallow hunts in the local dump and roam the city streets overrun with cheat grass and plantain. The Legendary Creatures will fit right in, with their jug band ethic, their shuffling drumbeats and rustic organs. First track was some O' Brother Where Art Thou goodness. Second track is more, it's a bit more confessional, A bit more Patsy Cline, but it's homeward bound on the midwest that adheres with sod houses and snow fences and riparian settlements. There is one from Pas/Cal in the band. And unlike all of the other Pas/Cal offshoots this is marvelous. It's intimate, her voice sounding newly arrived from 1953 and the music minted on wax cylinders and played on analog tubes and analog wash basins and digital dreams where the city has reverted to rural splendifolia. Lovely. Third track. It is the bass player from Pas/Cal that left before the Pas/Cal album came out. perhaps he was their final filter. perhaps it was Nathan Burgundy who would stand athwart the mixing board and yell stop when Casimer Pas/Cal thought let me just add 19 more tracks of guitar and disastrously annoying vocals over top of this. He might be the Tim Tebow of Pas/Cal beatified by exclusion. Until he plays a single down/note he will forever be the hero. Third track has a male voice. I don't know which male voice. It's soft, it's gentle, literate, considerate. her voice is the loveliest of the pair and she is prominent on the backing track but I don't mind his voice, he could be nice for a track or two on the debut album. But let's not overpraise him just in case. I really love this set. Last track, opening with some expansive organ, Mo Tucker'd out bass drum, her dreamy voice, rustic americana as played through a His Name is Alive filter. Why don't more bands from Detroit acknowledge the debt owed to Warren Defever and Karin Oliver? Unknown. These people probably have spent many hours in the Noise Camp. Is Warn a dreadful host? I've ben to Noise Camp. It is a difficult navigation to winnow through the popular front, the terrain of like minded homes with their red brick exteriors and inadequate dream lives until you reach the land where the Dirt Eaters came to roost, where Love's A Fish Eye was born, where Lovetta Pippin once stood tall. So very tall. But the Legendary Creatures don't sound like His Name is Alive, perhaps Tarnation(who were once produced by Warn) with a mind to the bloodline of colts and fillies. Horses are important.

Update: Well, of course, there is an album available, already.

Update: Unknowingly prescient as the "album" versions sound very much more His Name is Alive'ish. Not sure is this is for the better, they have lost a bit of a foggy gloom of the demos.

Update: Just two new tracks on the "album".

Update: Warn co-wrote two of the tracks. The two new songs are fantastic.

Update: Warn will hold the land in grady steam.