Comfort for the Traveler [Enhanced]

Utah Carol | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 24, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Label: Stomping Ground
• ASIN: B00005N7AL
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,963 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

What Jean Dubuffet is to abstract painting, Grant Birkenbeuel and JinJa Davis are to Americana. On their second release, Birkenbeuel and Davis's small songs, as vibrant as they are childlike, initially seem like the dabbling of musical dilettantes, but their shifting modal harmonies, inventive arrangements--flugelhorns, chimes, synths, and pedal steel provide subtle colorings--and pretty pop images of sunshine, space rockets, fresh air, and smiles offer a gentle, playful comfort that's sweet rather than saccharine. The closing song "Way of the Buffalo," with its vision of trees and green seas gone forever, even gestures towards dreams more political than personal. Imagine the Handsome Family on Paxil or Beck producing a children's album and you'll approximate, but not exhaust, the quiet, mirthful expressionism of Utah Carol. --Roy Kasten

Product Description

"Comfort for the Traveler," Utah Carol's follow up to their 20-song debut "Wonderwheel," is haunting, mysterious and melodic. The 15 well-crafted, country-tinged pop melodies are about longing, unrealized dreams, lost love and the endless search for something that is forever just out of reach. Utah Carol has created a dreamy, hypnotic and sometimes spooky landscape with layered orchestral instruments, vintage organs and keyboards, electric guitars, acoustic bass and the unique vocal harmonies of JinJa and Grant.

"Comfort for the Traveler" is an enhanced Digipak CD that contains a short film animation based on an excerpt of "Angel," the sixth song on the album. The animation short was produced by Utah Carol and directed by Eun-Ha Paek of The Milky Elephant in San Francisco. The animated film is in QuickTime format.

The album packaging was art directed and designed by Utah Carol and features paintings by New York City artist Lisa Krivacka and photography by Photonica, NYC. This title is an "ENHANCED" Digipak version of the album with a Quick Time video and accompanying software and installation instructions.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous and Rootsy, August 16, 2001

By 

Gianmarco Manzione (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comfort for the Traveler (Audio CD)

Just when you may have thought that all remaining possibilities of genre mixing had been exhausted by rock's more contemporary virtuosos, such as Beck, Joe Henry or Steve Earle, here comes Utah Carol. And if you thought the Flock of Seagulls had nothing to do with Country music, think again. Here is yet another experiment in which seemingly distant musical genres are wisked together in the same bowl, and the results are dazzling.

Airplanes recalls the early work of Aimee Mann, particularly Voices Carry, as it is every bit as celestial and conjures a mellow interpretation of the 80's rock ambiance that is at once refreshing and nostalgic. However, the rollicking, folksy tune that follows suggests that no one song on Comfort For The Traveler entirely nails down utah Carol's artistic vision, and later tunes, such as the primitive country/folk ballad When We're Apart or the rocking, Cure meet REM tune, Silver Space Rocket, enforce Utah Carol's standing as one of the most inventive and versatile artists in contemporary music.

At once Neil Young and Robert Smith, Pete Seger and Cyndi Lauper, Utah Carol's Comfort For The Traveler is aptly titled, as it serves as the perfect soundtrack for an autumn drive into the variegated wilderness of Vermont, or even just the morning commute. Utah Carol may not exactly be filling stadiums, but her musical vision does indeed contain multitudes, appealing to a wide spectrum that ranges from 80's nostalgia to Willie Nelson. That is a rare achievement, in any era.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A distinctive sound, December 28, 2001

By 

Sylvie Simmons, Editor, Mojo Magazine, U.K. (London, U.K.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comfort for the Traveler (Audio CD)

Wonderwheel, the home-grown debut by this husband-wife team named after a Marty Robbins cowboy hero, was one of my favourite albums of the summer of '99, its addictive blend of bittersweet Americana and art-pop sounding like a hillbilly fairground taken over by a couple of kids on mushrooms. More than two years on (it takes time with no budget, a home studio and the determination to enhance the CD with a short, dreamy animation film), second album Comfort... retains their distinctive sound on even stronger songs. There's a sense in their often floaty melodies of goind around and around, like eddies in a stream (When We're Apart, The Way of the Buffalo). And the cantering Promised Land and easy-riding Misfits evoke cowboys on a carousel horse.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful melodies, exceptional voices,, December 28, 2001

By 

Babylon, The Ultimate Internet Rock and Roll ... (Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comfort for the Traveler (Audio CD)

Utah Carol, as you can tell from their name, hail from Utah, United States. An unknown corner of the planet to most, it is known to many people from the Utah Jazz, the basketball team. So, too, Utah Carol are unknown to us also, as they have not acheived a following here, unfortunately. Accoustically, the prose which blossomed in the past year like Kings of Convenience, come close in the new disk to putting things in order, with the words Utah Carol themselves pen with mastery.

Country, blues, folk and rock ballads which sometimes meld into gospel and also psychedelic, Donovan and Dylan, Grateful Dead, Simon & Garfunkel emerge in Comfort for the Traveller in its beautiful melodies, exceptional voices, revealing for us an incomparable unkown from the other end of the Atlantic, which unfortunately noone cares to bring to our shores.