I ordered the first new CD after more than three months. Even two to be honest, to avoid paying shipping. After reading the thread on You Follow Me, an album by Nina Nastasia and Jim White, the drummer of the Dirty Three, I had to check it out. I didn't know her music before and therefore it was a very nice surprise when the first song I've Been Out Walking of the just over half an hour long album came out of the speakers. A sparse, haunting affair just with her voice, an acoustic guitar and the drums. Like all the album by the way. She sings of walking ingenuosly outside in the dark and discovering a man from whom she runs away. Apparently the ending is not happy:

In the second half Jim White's drums turn into the lead instrument. The intricate beat is totally mesmerising, it accelerates and decelerates again. Not sure but I think White uses syncopation. In any case his varied drumming fits perfectly to the story which is told in the song. You can hear her run, you can even hear her fall.

If there was a category "If you like this you also like that" here I'd put Michelle Shocked's accidental debut Texas Campfire Tapes, Stina Nordenstam's cover album People Are Strange (especially her version of I Dream of Jeannie) and Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) here. Bare atmospheric, sometimes spooky music which seems to be grounded in a very ancient folk tradition. The perfect antidote to the breathless mystical neo-folk by songstresses like Ms Newsom.