Giant Hand

Rumour has it that Ottawa's Kirk Ramsay picked up a guitar for the first time - only a-year-and-a-half ago - after watching the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Adopting the name Giant Hand, Ramsay's first LP, Coming Home, features a collection of songs clearly indebted to the aforementioned outsider legend, while incorporating Devendra Banhart's flighty delivery. Vulnerable, peculiar and full of ethereal imagery expertly bordering on the bizarre, brazen and banal, Coming Home veers between the hauntingly barren ("The Beast," "Down By The River") and the improbably jocular ("No Son of Mine," "Starting as People"). Ramsay relies on Johnston's blueprint just a bit too much on this debut but his compositions remain so undyingly captivating and earnest that Coming Home might spell out the beginnings of a brilliant career from a musician striving to find his inner oddball.