Castanets

Castanets
@ Pilot Light, Knoxville, October 27
by Andrew Clayman
Published in The Metro Pulse, October 2007



Ray Raposa doesn't belong to a scene, per se, but he certainly bears at least a passing resemblance to an increasingly prevalent subspecies of modern, bummed out, indie rock vagabonds. Like Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) and Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) before him, Raposa looks and sings like a grizzled but good-hearted train-hopper, complete with the "there might be a bird living in here" beard. Whoever rides the rails with him becomes his band, Castanets, and the beautiful sadness of the sites going by becomes the subject matter for his haunting, country-tinged ballads.

Unlike the rampant pretentiousness flowing out of some of the other bearded folkies, as well as pretty much every other artist on the Asthmatic Kitty label, Raposa manages to come off like the real deal, because he is. The man spent four years traveling around America on Greyhound buses and absorbing the realities of the not-so-glamorous hobo lifestyle. He recorded a number of demos during this period, eventually catching the notice of Asthmatic Kitty, who released the Castanets' debut, Cathedral, in 2004, and the follow-up, First Light's Freeze, a year later.

This month, album #3, In the Vines, arrives. With its weeping steel guitars and sparse acoustic ballads, it serves as the mournful soundtrack to what has been a particularly shitty year for Raposa (he's been mugged, had his tour van robbed, and battled depression). Fortunately, there's still plenty of beauty left in Castanets, which includes Deer Tick as the backing players on the current tour.