Susurrus Station

lush lyrical drone, with strings, acoustic guitar and hushed singing. repetitive melancholic strum and cello / violin skronk. Odd lyrics, oddly compelling arrangements and chord changes. sometimes falsetto-sung, stripped hypnotic raga-esque pieces. - Todd P

Susurrus Station's avant-folk is mighty pretentious (one song we heard included the words chortling, fiscal, odious and jocularity); on the other hand, the Swedish group's busy orchestrations set a haunting mood. - Time Out New York

Merging the sound worlds of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Dirty Three, Lambchop and Brian Eno; Susurrus Station are a haunting US outfit who mix gothic melodrama, orchestral jazz improv, experimental sound collage and a healthy dose of poetic lyrical license.
Crooning a line such as "canaries on the coal line/sky pilots with a hothouse for a ride/I tousled my lashes in anachronistic reactions/and strode out into the tremulous night" on LITERAL DRIFT, J.Breedon manages to sound like Nick Cave channelling William S Burroughs and Raymond Chandler, the cacophonous jazz improvisations in the background only adding to the sense of the baroque. Sara Dyberg sings with a touch more urgency and manic energy, her gothic wail underpinned by a scrawling brass infused folk jam on THE COMPANY WE KEEP.
Elsewhere, the stark electric guitar rumble of NETTLES' NEST comes as a welcome wake up call amidst this records sometimes subdued and rambling moments whilst the chaotic closing howl of THREADBARE BORN imagines Tom Waits fronting The Fall.
An intriguing and interesting record, and one that benefits from repeated listening; (1,2) UNBUCKLE THE BLUE finds Susurrus Station offering a collection of songs that ultimately reward your time. By no means, an instant or immediate affair, this is nevertheless one that's effects are long term and intoxicating. - UK Music Search

Swedish-American avant-gardists Susurrus Station’s second LP starts strongly with the darkly burlesque rumble of 'Top-Down Town', a cacophony of ominous sax and horn screeches held together by a military snare and two-step bass. The obvious influence is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, except that Susurrus Station’s lyrics veer more towards fragmentary abstraction than Cave’s winding narratives. Lines like "Out on the frontier, growing tired of the human form / The tensions are lacklustre in the saltpetre storm" walk a tightrope between the obliquely poetic and the plain pretentious. The self-conscious 'out-there'-ness pervades the music too, from the scratchy strings and tempo shifts of 'Literal Drift' to the syncopated, atonal guitar of 'Nettles’ Nest'. Although the effect is often hair-raising it’s easy to be turned off by singer J. Breeden’s muffled delivery of the type of scribblings that would make Will Self proud. A case of the tortured genius, methinks - Nick Mitchell at stv.tv