Brooklynite Jon DeRosa’s outfit are deceptive. At face value, PHAR offer little more than a sad shuffle, the odd cracked waltz and scattered flurries of noise. But give it time and these trampled-heart melodies burrow under the skin. Last year’s Uncut-endorsed These Are The New Good Times was DeRosa’s stoned-slacker take on slo-mo country mores, but here he broadens the palette with the addition of Low collaborator Marc Gartman as co-songwriter and ex-Mercury Rev pedal-steeler Gerald Menke. The tone is sepia, but softly spiralling guitars, cold shivers of banjo and the bedsit-meets-prairie duality of the two leads texture the whole like a relief painting.
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