Portland, Maine’s Matt Lajoie has been releasing a steady stream of LPs, CDs and tapes under the Cursillistas moniker for a little more than a half-decade now, the bulk of them on the Portland-based L’animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings label. This limited-to-225 LP features a handmade, silkscreened glow-in-the-dark cover, along with a glossy insert chronicling the sources of each of the album’s tracks. The majority of them have actually already been released in some form or another on limited tapes CD-r’s, although some of them are different versions. The songs generally feature much reverb, far-away-sounding guitars, fragile vocals, and sometimes whistling. The songs keep an unhurried pace, occasionally working up to a psychedelic organ-filled haze, like on the epic “Frontier Gothic”, but also stripping down to tape hiss-covered acoustic guitar soloing on “Howling Wind II”. The vocals sound a bit grating and amateurish at times, but they’re put to good use on melodic, feedback-drenched gems such as “Send Your Sea”. The album is pretty diverse, which is to be expected of an album taken from several different sources recorded over several years, but it has a remarkable consistency for such an album, and makes for a solid listening experience.
L’animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings
