Katamine

Gloomier than Elliott Smith? Hardly sounds possible, but Israeli musician Assaf Tager, former guitar player for Mr. Misery himself, pulls it off. A talented singer-songwriter in his own right, Tager, along with Uri Frost on guitar, Zoe Polanski on bass and Casio, and Haggai Fershtman on drums, is beginning to make a name for himself, as evidenced by a recent opening gig for Devendra Banhart and an imminent iTunes/Coca-Cola ad campaign. Lag, Katamine’s second disc, has an overall meditative tone, with darkly beautiful and intricately picked guitar numbers that will strike a painfully familiar note with Elliott Smith fans. The album’s brutal cover art, however, with its bruised, hollow-eyed faces, tells the true story of this disc, which melts into aural strangeness towards the middle. Later songs are weighted down by effects-laden instrumentation — the droning, hissing and whining creates an eerie and unsettling mood. Lag’s brooding atmosphere has an apocalyptic undercurrent that bodes of ill omens and danger in the water.