Trummors

After leaving years in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn for the more remote surroundings of Woodstock in upstate New York, songwriters Anne Cunningham and David Lerner used their band Trummors as an outlet for reflection on the vast differences and disparities between bustling city life and living in the country. Over and Around the Clove is a stunning debut of lush and lonely indie folk sounds as well as a thoughtful meditation on being stuck between very different worlds. The album opens with "Cold on McGuiness Boulevard," a traditional and twangy honky tonk number that tells the story of wintry urban displacement and heartbreak in the big city. The strange dichotomy of this song's homespun sounds and updated themes is one that carries throughout the album. Rather than relying on nostalgic lyrical themes to match their traditional sounds, Trummors instead sing of more modern and sincere subject matter. Frustration and small-town boredom are investigated in the gorgeously melancholic alt-country of "Knoxville, TN," while "Ever Do I Wait" tackles dead friends and the struggles of youth. Spare instrumentation makes the individual elements of Over and Around the Clove stand out with unique clarity. The soaring harmonica and glistening Dobro plucks of "Odessa" and "It Won't Take Long" revel in a country blues mode not too far from the rootsy feel of Harvest-era Neil Young or Gillian Welch's sad-hearted folk sounds. Chris Zaloom augments the ghostly tambourine clacks and gentle acoustic guitar strums with tasteful pedal steel, and the occasional harmonium drone or lingering finger-style guitar run adds a slight undercurrent of pastoral '70s psychedelia to the album. The blazing pedal steel run and tight vocal harmonies of "Fields of Fire" lend a Flying Burrito Brothers sense of freewheeling wonder to the album. With Over and Around the Clove, Cunningham and Lerner have crafted a seemingly effortless album that deals in both straightforward, unassuming musical themes and deeper complexities hiding just below the surface. It's a brilliant debut, each song a different story with imagery so direct and relatable that the tunes become transportive, drawing the listener into the patient, insular, and painfully beautiful world Trummors have spun with their songs. - All Music Guide

Ultimately, there may be no satisfactory explanation of the Brooklyn bucolic—why New York's hippest borough should become the delta of the new-old rural Americana. While mainstream country rock courts relevance with patriotic anthems and Pro-Tooled renewals of old country truths, Brooklyn's root farmers cultivate something like the opposite of relevance—a hermetic, defiantly otherworldly retro that smacks of abdication, a rejection of modern musical, technological, and cultural values. It is done with abundant style, of course, and with a variable ratio of earnestness to postmodern winking. Trummors, a mostly acoustic alt-roots duo formerly of Greenpoint and now of Saugerties, approaches the "new old" from a chamber-country angle: delicate, Zen-still, emotionally leveled (though not quite to that pharmaceutical Cowboy Junkies extent). The Anne Cunningham-sung songs chase the homely and eccentric essences of Carter Family country. The tracks sung by David Lerner (ex-Ted Leo and the Pharmacists) begin with the acid country of Gram Parsons and explore from there, often out of folk and country's realm entirely. The title track achieves a hushed '60s shimmer-pop of the kind Belle & Sebastian routinely brews. Over and Around the Clove is an album of great sonic coherence, a singular, immersive trip. Ambience comes courtesy of close harmonies and a droning harmonium, filigreed fringes via a well-played pedal steel. Miracle-of-reverb tracks like "Ever Do I Wait" and "Salinas" almost approach the celestial Americana of Fleet Foxes. - Chronogram

One half of Trummors, David Lerner, is best known for his role as bassist in Ted Leo And The Pharmacists, but his new acoustic duo check in some ways from Leo’s agit-punk. With vocalist Anne Cunningham, Lerner creates an appealingly rustic, Appalachian sound; the simple strumming and sweet-and-sour harmonies are embellished with steel guitar, harmonica and weepy pedal steel, something like an old-fashioned needlepoint sampler set to music (or the gentler moments of the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty). The politics here are personal, and the longing of tunes such as “Odessa” and “Platte Clove Road”—set to familiar chord progressions and melodies—may be the most complex thing about them. An album made for listening while you stare from your back porch (or apartment window) as the sun sets, Over And Around The Clove is the latest proof that the well of traditional American music is truly bottomless. - Alternative Press

Anne Cunningham and Dave Lerner (ex-Ted Leo & the Pharmacists) comprise the duo Trummors, and the two have recently relocated from Brooklyn to Woodstock, New York. It’s important to note because their latest record, Over and Around the Clove, has a bit of urban cowboy to it, but mostly it’s the kind of pastoral country-folk you’d expect from a move out of the city. Cunningham and Lerner trade vocals over dusty folk tunes, and each has their own disarmingly hushed sweetness. The songs are built up with guitar from Meg Baird collaborator Marc Orleans and pedal steel from Chris Zaloom.

With just these simple elements, the band takes us through a travelogue of locations—we jump from streets on “Cold on Memphis Boulevard” and “Platte Cove Road” to dots on bigger maps like “Odessa” and “Nashville, TN”—as well as a myriad of folk-pop stylings. The sweet rundown melody of the title track also reveals the duo’s knack for a great line (“The tourists sometimes slow down when they’re lost”) while “Salinas” shows their ability to stretch out into rugged space. The songs are immediately sweet, but repeated listens show the deep emotion and complications underneath. At just under 30 minutes, this Trummors album may seem slight, but its effect is anything but. - Popmatters