Records like Casey Holford’s “Bad Spell, Good Spell” play like what might hear if the guy outside the Sidewalk Cafe hands you his CD and when you find it in your coat pocket three weeks later and put it on, it’s actually kinda good. Commanding but not abrasive, pleasantly melodic but not over-embellished, Holford’s voice runs like rainwater over and between the reasonant echoes of an acoustic twelve-string. It is joined on this ten-track disc by charming, heartfelt backing vocals from fellow anti-folker and sometime Holford collaborator Jenn Lindsay, as well as by organ tracks and rhythmic tapping on notebooks and cardboard boxes from Casey’s brother, Matt. Holford plays the rest of the instruments himself, and though the one-man core lineup does include drums and bass, “Bad Spell, Good Spell”never seems to come near a full-band sound. It is the richness of Holford’s guitar work that fills the majority of empty space, deeply resounding and prone to jumps in time signature that do not jolt, but animate. Set against them are lyrics that describe the little peculiarities of life, especially life in New York. ”On the Map” depicts beautifully the ocean of personal significance to be found within the tangled lines of a subway map, ending on a note of well-taken humor: “The post offices are marked with little dots of red.”
The album’s one weakness is that, especially on “Book of Pages,” its sound occasionally dips into dreaded Dave Mathews/John Mayer territory. Instances like these, however, are thoroughly in the minority. Most of the time, is what you would get if you could take the vocal style and guitar mechanics cultivated by Mathews and Mayer and apply them to lyrics with an inherent honesty and music embedded with a local club atmosphere, and place them in the mind an artist not tied to a mindless, carabineer-keychained mainstream. -Milo Rivers
