Damion Suomi & The Minor Prophets – Go and Sell All Your Things

The mainstream has skirted around indie-folk over the past couple decades.  Major strides were made during the indie boom of the early 2000’s with bands like Bright Eyes and The Decemberists, but folk was still more of a side dish rather than a main course.  But then, just last year came Mumford & Sons.  Their accessible blend of catchy rhythms and traditional folk exploded across the airwaves.  Every loosely alternative radio station in my city jumped on the wagon, and it just keeps on rolling.  Glance on the Amazon.com digital album charts and the album has been going strong in the top 100 for 454 straight days – and counting.

For proof of just how consuming this trend has become, look no further than one of Hopeless Records most recent signing, Damion Suomi & The Minor Prophets.  For a trend setting label currently harboring Silverstein, There For Tomorrow, and Anarbor, there is simply no precedent.  Listeners won’t find an ounce of pop or juvenile naivety here – no, instead they’ll be greeted by one of the year’s deepest, most sophisticated forays into folk-rock.

Vocally unique and thematically ambitious, the album’s traditional grassroots rhythms compliment theological topics, also marking a major first for their label.  The band does what many strive for but few achieve – craft catchy, engrossing toe tappers that are as insightful as they are easy to digest.  The challenging biblical references poetically highlight themes of sin, forgiveness, and living in fear.  Those familiar with the ever-eloquent Slim Cessna’s Auto Club will know what madness awaits them.

Their Hopeless Records debut, Go, And Sell All Of Your Things unfolds in two distinct offshoots – the first is comparable to a string of fearful, sermon-like warnings, and the second plays out like a celebratory pathway to the grave.  Opening with the chant-like “The Call,” Suomi evokes dark imagery of repenting indulgences – “if you want to be the hero, temptations come in threes/you must head out to the dessert, filled with hunger pains… you’re going to feel alone, you’re gonna feel afraid/let the water clear itself, watch it all fall into place.”  The track’s plodding, hollow percussion accentuates Suomi’s daunting, wiry clarity.  He sounds like the unlikely fusion of State Radio’s trembling Chad Urmston singing at an REM pitch, all with the simplicity of Bob Dylan’s nomadic distance.  It’s an urgent, direct, and above all honest voice.

When Suomi puts it on the line a track later on “Camel,” he challenges religious conventions with humbling precision and scriptural reference.  The song captures the desperation of a wealthy man’s plea for a clear conscious approaching his deathbed: “Help me get that camel through the eye, cause I’m a rich man I know I’m gonna die/blessed are the poet, did you curse me with more” to which he adds “I’ll cut you ten percent, soon I’ll be heaven sent” in an obvious reference to the act of tithing.  Aware that he’s lived an outwardly clean life, paranoia drives him to uncertainty, in turn driving him on a desperate hunt for self-validation.  Suomi details knowledge’s fatal flaw a track later with the passage “the smarter you get the sadder you’ll be… no matter how much we see, no matter how much we hear, we’re never satisfied,” expanding on the insight with the comparison “it’s better to be poor and wise in your youth than a foolish king who refuses good advice.”  Regardless of theological knowledge, such themes stand to resonate with listeners’ own experiences, making Go, And Sell All Of Your Things a deeply personal encounter.

Instrumentally speaking these tracks range from plodding thinkers to up beat lap tappers.  “Mustard Seed” and “Holy Ghost” bounce along to a lush folk backdrop that draws on everything from Murder By Death (just check out that bass work and distortion) to The Builders & The Butchers (it’s all so “rural” and “earthy” in nature).  Go, And Sell All Of Your Things follows a classic track sequence with a fast-slow-fast pattern that plays out from start to finish largely unquestioned.  While predictable, the pattern never jeopardizes or dilutes lyrical insight.

At about the mid-way point Suomi makes a starling divergence from biblical themes.  Forfeiting his struggle for redemption, he embraces worldly fulfillment. “A Dog From Hell (and his good advice)” lays down his resolve: “we’re here to unlearn the church and state,” from which point on the band revs its engines ands rides into town (quite literally on “City On A Hill”) to slam black shots in local saloons.  Based on the full gang vocal choruses, the band finds welcome from such a crowd, bestowing the back half a sense of communal acceptance free of God’s critical eye.  However, the album ends with “The Lion, The Ram, & The Fish;” a track with references suggesting Suomi understands that his flaws can never truly escape consequence.

Go, And Sell All Of Your Things may be the product of recent trends – but that can’t mask what makes the album truly special.  Indie-folk isn’t something a band can imitate; it’s something that arises from deep, deep within.  As Go, And Sell All Of Your Things demonstrates, Damion Suomi & The Minor Prophets have that very ambiguous blend of experience and ability coursing through every vein in their bodies.  And that being said, if this album is indicative of this indie-folk trend’s blossoming potential, then sign me up, cause I’m ready to go mainstream.