ZapTown

Common Prayer
There Is A Mountain
Big Potato Records
Rating: 3 out of 5

Link: http://www.common-prayer.com/

From the initial sound of Common Prayer’s debut, it sounds like this New York band spends its summer at the bluegrass festivals near the foothills of Virginia’s mountainside and their winters with their hearts in the Appalachians.

Instead Jason Sebastian Russo traveled even farther to the English town of Steventon, grabbed some British musicians, and holed up in a cow barn. There Is A Mountain is the result.

Thinking in that context, the album is a gorgeous anti-pop album. The foundation and groundwork lie in the pop construct, but Russo writes songs in the rustic nature that contain the same spirit as those musicians rolling finger-picking melodies down the bluegrass hills of Kentucky.

It’s a small statement to say that there is nothing traditional about this album. By the time you get used to these ideas and the opener “Common Prayer,” they throw that out the window and “Hopewell” pounds out a rambunctious rhythm as Russo wails like he just experienced teenage rebellion with an acoustic guitar. But his rebellion is celebration, and he wants you to sing along.

“American Sex” is a low-brow, flacid song with folk-like context. Listen to the lyrics and you will want to promote the abstinence program.

The band brings things back up. From the foot-stomping, slide guitar of “Marriage Song,” a song that is reminescent to a band at the local town festival circa 1889, to the ‘70s drenched “Moneyspider” Russo has concocted just the right attributes to keep this album moving while keeping it interesting, yet you still wish they would up the ante and build a little more diversity within their music, especially with that many songs on the recording.

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