Old Earth is the outsider folk rock of Milwaukee based Todd Umhoefer; a solitary, prolific and little known musician who has turned to a small Edinburgh label to find a European audience. Good luck with that!
This short, 30 minute, album presents him as a serious artist in every sense and he makes few concessions to mainstream listeners. He hasn't even bothered to give titles to the five songs which are anonymously identified simply as Track 1, Track 2 etc.
Track 1 is 11 minutes of slow-building, multi-layered, guitar-driven intensity with Umhoefer's backwoods preacherman vocals being a cross between Michael Gira and Daniel Higgs.
In contrast the driving beat of Track 5 has the immediacy and insistency of Bo Diddley re-recorded from a shotgun shack.
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The production values, at least on the MP3 version, are very rough illustrating that this type of music is best suited to vinyl.
Umhoefer has the attitude of a loner but on this disc he is helped by musicians from his locality including Nick Berg and Chris Porterfield of Field Report and Jon Mueller of Volcano Choir. The striking cover art is by Jennifer Mehigan
There's rawness but depth here; proof perhaps that the strongest roots grow best in Old Earth.
Hear the album on Bandcamp
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