Molasses

Montreal-based Molasses threatens to numb your world with the bleak beauty of five minimalist ballads by composer/singer/guitar player Scott Chernoff. Sparse acoustic soundscapes like "Old Poe" are haunted by spare guitar feedback, accentuating a country-folk sound confined inside the bowels of a rescue mission basement. Like Cowboy Junkies for the post-apocalypse, Molasses achieve eerie grandeur with the sound of two saws in the poignant "Drunkard's Lament." While cello, violin, organ and harmonica add almost lush orchestration to the hymn-like melody of "Five Hundred Miles From Baltimore," the vision that culminates in "Sleeping Pill Blues" recreates the stark poetry of the streets, a communal dream that's broken like stale bread into the refrain, "The bums are in the mission drinking salvation army soup." Go out and buy this black artefact to relive the stories of the streets.