Review: Thee Moths – “Nature”

This spare, bleak record defines itself not through somber acoustic ruminations or Alex Botten’s breathy whisper of a voice but in how those elements are cut up and filtered through Botten’s prominently featured laptop.

(A painted homage to the machine, one’s led to believe, is even featured on the cover.)

The result is hit or miss and, sadly, more often the latter.  Tracks like “Shallow Blue Ocean” or “Do Not Be Ashamed,” for all their dead space or forced found sounds, are genuinely beautiful. But, do we really need to find them after wandering through a landscape so cluttered with digital glitches and stitch-weary segues that one must wonder if their CD player’s on the fritz? – Punk Planet, November/December 2006

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