Angelo De Augustine wrote, arranged, recorded, produced and mixed his fourth studio album, Toil and Trouble, himself, employing 27 different instruments — including, apparently, a xylophone made of glass. I'm pretty sure that's what we hear on "Home Town," a fitting proof-of-concept for a paradoxically whimsical album charting the strife of existing in the modern world; its opening track is about a mass shooting that happened near his former residence.
As the singer-songwriter tells it: while writing the album, he had to "take [himself] out of reality in order to try to understand reality." From alien abductions to Peter Pan and Christopher Robin, De Augustine digs deep into these "counter-worlds" with a delicate hand — not unlike how he handled the fictional worlds dissected with Sufjan Stevens on 2021's A Beginner's Mind.
De Augustine's signature falsetto rings throughout, with standouts "Another Universe," "The Ballad of Better and Barney Hill" and the title track drifting into hazy yet cinematic territory.
(Asthmatic Kitty)As the singer-songwriter tells it: while writing the album, he had to "take [himself] out of reality in order to try to understand reality." From alien abductions to Peter Pan and Christopher Robin, De Augustine digs deep into these "counter-worlds" with a delicate hand — not unlike how he handled the fictional worlds dissected with Sufjan Stevens on 2021's A Beginner's Mind.
De Augustine's signature falsetto rings throughout, with standouts "Another Universe," "The Ballad of Better and Barney Hill" and the title track drifting into hazy yet cinematic territory.
