A track from ... "The long awaited new album, A Vintage Burden from the legendary Charalambides, now pared down to the original core duo of Christina Carter and Tom Carter. After having exorcized some demons through the release of their last album Joy Shapes, here they have recorded a more melodic song cycle, reminiscent of their earlier albums Union and Market Square."

This is easily more compelling work by Charalambides than what I'm used to. Certainly more structured, linear and focused overall, but no less expansive. Christina Carter seems to channel a bit of Mimi Parker here, which caught me off guard.

hxxp://s50.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0DSD ... I55GI40HRR

Did I mention it sounds like mid-early Low?

This is really nice. I liked their last two albums, but this direction is a lot easier take in. I've never heard Union or Market Square, but I like older stuff of theirs like Houston and Our Bed Is Green that is somewhat more song-like.

It's kinda like a more tuneful and pretty version of what Jackie-O Motherfucker were doing on their last album.

One last bump, because I think this is one of the best albums I've heard all year, and you're all tools, except for Drinky, at least.

You won me over with your honey talkin' but now the link's gone.

Na, the link's still there, sweet'ums. You have to replace hxxp with http.

Oh, aren't I a bright one.

It's got quite the glacial build-up, but impressively so.

It's like Margot Timmins doing Streisand's "Evergreen" and The Youngbloods "Get Together" as a Radiohead song.

Yeah. I trust you.

I love me some Tom Carter guitar. This is nice, but then again there has never been a Charalambides album I didn't dig. And the only album either Tom or Christina have been involved with that I didn't like was her Bastard Wing record.

I am a bit surprised Tom stayed in "song mode" though. I would've thought he got that out of his system on the Badgerlore record. I do like his less structured stuff. Root King is an all time top 50 for me, though the one he did with Bardo Pond was real structured (really close to some Jackie O in my opinion) and I enjoyed it also. I guess the point I'm getting at is Tom Carter can do no wrong in my book.

Interesting, you would know better than I. A lot of the freer stuff I've heard of either of them do is nice, but mostly lost on me. Hasn't left an impression. Then again, I have yet to hear "Monument" even.

I realize it's probably part of the point of this type of texture-based group, but I don't think the first couple of minutes of that song are necessary. The spareness goes beyond sparse and is really just plinking and mumbling. The rest is great, though.