Damon Moon and the Whispering Drifters
The Holy Noise EP
Atlanta, GA
“Dixie Damaged”
Staking a claim in the crowded Southern-gothic half-acre is a risky, overdone business. Although the commonness of these Faulkner tropes can get tiresome, it does give us native Southerners a huge bump in mystique from other parts of the globe. One of the last things any self-respecting musician would want to do after deciding to go down this foreboding two-lane would be to talk about those white lines and warn others about the Dark (capital D). This is exactly what Damon Moon and the Whispering Drifters (a band name that conjures images of Hank Williams) do in the very first song off their new EP.
They do it over twangy guitars and lonesome pedal steel, and somehow it works. Other helpful ingredients include noise, hard-to-hear layered vocals and psychedelic effects woven into the mix. They hover somewhere in the musical and geographical space between Songs: Ohia and Jim White from Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. The Holy Noise closes with the old blues warhorse “Motherless Child,” as Damon Moon gives one of the best vocal performances on the record. All the noise, layers and effects from the rest of the EP are gone and we’re left with Moon and the band playing as gracefully as you could possibly want, showing that they can do the traditional stuff (minus the modernity) and get it right. (Pop Vulture)