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Of the Cathmawr Yards is a weird album, but sometimes weird is exactly right. That's the case here.
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Catamawr Yards, then, gets better as it gets more adventurous, and it gets more adventurous as it leans more on that backing band.
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It’s a comfort record really, sincere in intention and almost flawless in execution.
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Under The RadarJim Elkington, of The Zincs, and Janet Bean, of Freakwater, have here borrowed some of the languor, but little of the heartache of their other projects. [Summer 2009, p.74]
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The Horse’s Ha’s debut album, Of The Cathmawr Yards, blends Elkington and Bean’s voices and sensibilities together seamlessly on a set of songs that relies heavily on intricate acoustic guitar plucking, dreamy violin, and a gently melancholy air.
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Ellington and Bean’s voices braid pleasant timbres that sound quite right sailing over the band’s strum and shuffle, but they’re curiously lacking in the chemistry that separates necessary from nice.
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The best the band could do is take this folk stance and make it somehow relatable to the sort of listeners like those in Chicago, blessed as they are with one of the most storied and diverse stocks of bands in the country. What Of the Cathmawr Yards ends up instead is a cold catalogue of personal taste and increasingly diminishing scope.
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Of the Cathmawr Yards is Ambien-fueled folk that never rises above room temperature, well-crafted yet lacking in passion and vitality.