People Skills - Hum of The Non-Engine

The last People Skills LP came out seven years ago. One whole dog year. But our man Jesse Sinclair Dewlow hasn't exactly been lying around getting fat in the sun since, having turned out a good number of cassette collections, produced at least two highly significant Eyes of the Amaryllis records, and contributed to a handful of compilations, not least our very own Thorn Valley. Hum Of The Non-Engine seems to consciously split itself between those more alterna-pop one off tracks (Flag For Gravity from Thorn Valley does feature) and the ethereal drift of the Amaryllis universe, making a great advert for the kind of purgatorial, half-world gloom-pop Dewlow has been chiseling away at from the get go. Not sure i've heard many more adept at the "lo-fi as instrument" approach, the texture and tone of the recording as intrinsic to its meaning as, yknow, the words and melody and what not. That makes for a big Lambkin influence, although i'm starting to get bored with hearing myself namecheck the Shadow Ring, so i'll instead say that i'm also reminded of early Bill Callahan/Sebadoh when there's singing to be sung and some outer edge transmission from the Sound of Pig universe when there is not. What's all Dewlow's own is the syrupy gloop that seems to dress each song, which could be either primordial soup or the amniotic fluid of some tenth planet being we've yet to encounter. Which is the funny thing about People Skills: they always sound so alien.