Dorks And Losers

Lang­horne Slim (Sean Scol­nick) has had a very event­ful career, but luck­ily his tal­ent was able to see him through even the tough­est of moments — most notably see­ing his record label V2 fold and his debut album fail to be released. But all was not lost for the Lang­horne, Penn­syl­va­nia now turned Brook­lyn, New York folk singer as his band’s self-titled album has finally been released.

The War Eagles are made up of Paul Defiglia on bass and Malachi DeLorenzo on drums and the two def­i­nitely add to Langhorne’s mix of tra­di­tional, yet untra­di­tional folk sen­si­bil­i­ties. That might sound like a con­tra­dic­tion, which in fact, it is. The trio’s song list choice runs at an almost staccato-like fash­ion, jux­ta­pos­ing mod­ern up-tempo folk songs with more stripped down tra­di­tional tunes.

The LP begins with two light­hearted tracks “Spin­ning Com­pass” and “Rebel Side Of Heaven” (down­load mp3 here), the lat­ter of which preaches a less saintly, but less dev­il­ish style of liv­ing. The emo­tion­ally charged, yet phys­i­cally restrained “Rest­less” fol­lows, and the ballad-like “Some­times” fol­lows that with the kind of lyrics writ­ten for an impromptu mid­night ser­e­nade by a would-be lover to his high school crush (“A friend of mine claimed you were out of my league / It was clear to me it was you I was meant to be lov­ing”). Lang­horne obvi­ously has more class and grace to pull it off successfully.

He once com­mented about his lyri­cisms that he was “not sure that there’s any other kind, but the songs [he] writes are love songs” (press release). He means the non-romantic form of love, the “kind of ther­apy, self-help for the flow­ers and the shit along the road of life” that truly makes up the world, at least the real one.

In thir­teen brief — some­times very brief — seem­ingly ran­dom­ized songs, Lang­horne and the rest of the boys suc­ceed in depict­ing life’s sub­tleties that many of us take for granted. The band’s LP can be per­fectly summed up in “Wor­ries” and its care­free atti­tude of the world: “And maybe I’m dumb for mak­ing you smile / I don’t know, but I will in a while / We passed a grave­yard and held our breath / We bet­ter kiss if we’re get­ting closer to death.”

[photo via Sneak Attack Media]
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Track list:

1. Spin­ning Com­pass
2. Rebel Side Of Heaven
3. Rest­less
4. Some­times
5. She’s Gone
6. Colette
7. Hello Sun­shine
8. Dia­monds and Gold
9. The Hon­ey­moon
10. Tip­ping Point
11. Oh Honey
12. Wor­ries
13. Hummingbird

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