Kapow Music

"New Chapel Hill resident (by way of Austin, Texas) John Ribo completes an odyssey begun in Lyon, France, in 1999 on a $70 analog four-track, with this, his debut album. Its pretty, low-key charms recall the rustic pop intimacy of Sparklehorse in their quieter moments or the sunny tones of a stripped-down Grandaddy. Like both acts, the gentle guitar melodies are sometimes accompanied by washes of ambient electronic tones as well as the well-deployed additional instrumentation, such as the wistful violin line of the loping "Cycles," or the theremin on the jaunty, noisy pop tune "Just There" and the haunting "Ease." Most of the tracks are spare, operating on a very successful less-is-more strategy. In fact, several of the best-realized tracks are straightforwardly folky in tone, such as the melancholy "One-way Train" and "Just A Boy Pt. I," with its warm vocal harmonies. The album's highlight, "Ma Tutrice," manages a mesh of both approaches, with the rambling, bluesy acoustic guitar abetted by a bevy of effects that forge a rich gumbo of sounds, which somehow only reinforce the song's happy, head-bobbing melody. A solid, friendly album whose moods move like weather through gray skies, cloudy mornings, little rainbows and bursts of sunshine." - The Independent Weekly