Sean Scolnick has one hell of a band behind him. Anybody who’s felt its force in a live setting can attest to that. But for as long as Scolnick (a.k.a. Langhorne Slim) has made the downtown-NYC rounds, his stage presence has been more impressive than his songcraft. The guitar-toting folk troubadour knows how to move, and he knows how to stomp. When the fuse for the Langhorne Slim explosion—derailed by V2 Records’ demise last year—went wet, the Kemado label stepped in to light things again with Scolnick’s full-length debut. Langhorne Slim boasts a slew of fingerpicked beauties of a meatier, fuller variety than on 2006’s Engine EP. The difference is identifiable in the first piano tickles and shreds of cello on opener “Spinning Compass” and in the steel-drum flourishes of roadhouse burner “She’s Gone.” While Scolnick hasn’t refined his oftentimes maudlin lyrical sensibilities to match his serious taste for pop hooks, his honeycombed, hopscotching vocal delivery now has some muscle to back it up. [www.kemado.com]
—David Bevan
