Before Josephine Foster was an idiosyncratic solo singer, she was a member of short-lived folk duo The Children’s Hour. Here, Foster’s taut, strange voice and occasional harp, piano, ukulele and harmonium player was paired with Andy Bar’s loose and scratchy guitar. The duo recorded an EP and one excellent, underlooked album, SOS JFK, which came out in 2003 on Rough Trade and featured Tim Daisy on drums. But The Children’s Hour recorded a second album not long after, this time as a fully-fledged trio with Dave Pajo. That record, Going Home, is finally getting released on Drag City after being rediscovered in the vaults.
PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE
The creation story of Going Home is part of the fun. Even though The Children’s Hour were a strictly minority pursuit, way too weird and abstract for the mainstream, the duo were asked to open for Zwan, Billy Corgan’s post-Pumpkins supergroup that would eventually dissolve in bitter recrimination. That tour saw The Children’s Hour (the name comes from Longfellow rather than the BBC) take their unusual music – oddly sacred, sometimes twee, more than a little freaky – to the arenas of North America. But for the music to work in a bigger venue, it needed additional pep, so Zwan’s David Pajo agreed to step in on drums. Pajo, once of Slint of course, admired The Children Hour’s awkward, almost ungainly, spirit and after the tour finished, he took them into a studio in Shelbyville, Kentucky, owned by Will Oldham’s brother Paul. It’s where Pajo had recorded I See A Darkness.
That’s where the three-piece version of The Children’s Hour laid down the eight tracks on Going Home, which were believed lost until Paul Oldham found them last year during a spring clean. Half of these songs – “Anna”, “Wyoming”, “Adoption Day” and “Going Home” – were new versions of tracks that first featured on JFK SOS and appear here little changed, although perhaps Pajo’s drumming is generally more aggressive than Tim Daisy’s on the original album.
But the other four songs are entirely new. “Leader Soldier”, a version of which featured on Foster’s 2013 out-take album Strangers On The Trail, has Foster at her most Nico-like, while Bar and Pajo provide taut and unsettling accompaniment. On the adorable “Dance With Me”, Pajo’s percussion leads a jangly love song, that features a gorgeous duet between Bar and Foster reminiscent of The Moldy Peaches. “Bright Lights” sees Foster ponder mortality and impending death against another strong Pajo-Bar backdrop, with discordant jabs of post-rock guitar and clattering rhythm. Finally comes “Rainbow”, a ballad with a spidery lead guitar from Bar and ominous vocal by Foster, with Pajo supplying a more minimalist backbeat. Cute and creepy in equal measure.