Like a lot of folk singer-songwriters, Alec Gross paints a specific time and place for the experiences that his character (Ron Avery) makes his way through. Most of these aren’t happy times, and this comes through loud and clear on songs like the haunting ‘Burning Grounds,’ inspired by Alec’s trip to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem and a poem he saw there by Anatoly Kuznetsov.
Most tracks are quiet and moody impressions of an imagined idyllic existence, from the Irish ballad ‘Be Not Jealous of the Sea,’ to the tormented ‘Looking Glass Lies.’ It isn’t until barnburner ‘Strip the Lanterns’ that we hear Gross really cut loose, but it’s well worth the wait through the record’s more even-tempered and traditional sections. – Read Mike Levine interview with Alec Gross here.
