So this was posted towards the beginning of the year but I am going to re-post it for three reasons:
(1) The original post link is no longer valid.
(2) The first time it was posted, it was done by a user whose only post was this album and therefore probably didn't catch much attention.
(3) It is an amazing album.
The National Lights - The Dead Will Walk, Dear (2007)Genre: Folk with very dark lyrics
http://www.mediafire.com/?1mizwyd2nzm
"THE NATIONAL LIGHTS explore the graceful, folky traditionalism of acts like Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens, but behind their quiet sound lies more sinister subject matter: obsessive love, jealousy and a killing. Songwriter Jacob Thomas Berns writes songs about small American towns, rivers and fields and falling in love, but his towns hide secrets, the landscape hides graves."
"The Dead Will Walk, Dear is a hushed, beautiful song cycle that, upon close listen, is actually a disturbing series of songs about a river and some girls who have been killed and dumped into it. Yeah, old fashioned murder ballads cleverly disguised as songs of love lost. Songwriter Jacob Berns may sound innocent enough, but the dude’s got a serious dark side."
And check out the pitchfork review, makes me love it even more.
Sick, sick, sick. That's what this album is. Oh sure, it sounds pretty, with its gentle, mostly acoustic arrangements, whispery vocals, and other folkish whatnot, but wait a second. All those references to grinding bones and eating flesh and burying things aren't metaphors or poetic turns of phrase-- they're actually about killing people, eating them, and burying them. Songwriter and principle vocalist Jacob Thomas Berns sounds musically well adjusted, but I get the feeling he was the kid who worried his eight grade English teacher with disturbing journal entries about sexual violence and cold-blooded murder.
See the rest of the review