Ashes and still-burning embers and sooty detritus

Brother Mitya - Home Recordings
Folktale #27

Brother Mitya's Home Recordings has this wonderful little creation myth. From the cassette’s tiny liner notes: "These recordings were literally saved from the wreckage of a house fire that destroyed my home in Arcata, Ca. on February 4, 2008." It casually reminds me of the story behind Shack's rather swell Waterpistol, when a fire destroyed the album's master tapes and the only remaining copy was lost for months before turning up in a car the producer had rented.

The tape's cover art reminds me of Papercuts' Can't Go Back. The insert was allegedly rescued from the ashes and still-burning embers and sooty detritus of the house fire. There was actually a misshapen blackish, brownish black mark on the insert in my cassette, like a cigarette burn you see on a couch in a frat house. It was thumb-sized, like someone had attempted to fingerprint Satan. It's probably fake, but that's okay. I like pretending it isn't.

But what about the music? Oh. Well, the California-based Brother Mitya spends a fair amount of time sounding utterly broken and battered, like the end of every verse may find him collapsing into tears. Most of the cassette finds the singer/songwriter intertwining sentiments of raw emotion with fragments of acoustic guitar.

"Apples" is folk that's both indolent and theatrical, Brother Mitya playing three gentle notes and then pausing, then playing three more notes and pausing, etc. The notes are like bubbles from a tiny wand; they float there in the silence and then pop and then three more are made. "Dawg" has a bit more pep, despite its rather forlorn subject matter. Over circular guitar playing, Brother Mitya asks, "Do you think he'll ever come to see me?" and "Do you think he'll ever want to know me?" Then a crusher of a closer: "Why did you leave me?"

The release's final song, "February 4, 2008 (letsnotbeantiphysicallove)," ends with the sound of water trickling intermittently, which conjured up the image of Brother Mitya standing before his fire-consumed, fallen-in house the morning after the blaze, listening to the sound of the water from the firehouses drip-drip-driping.