David Thomas Broughton & Juice Voice Ensemble – Sliding the Same Way

It’s hard to feel totally at ease during Sliding the Same Way. Maybe it’s due to lyrics like “I killed a man with a broken glass” in the opening song – a confession sung first in David Thomas Broughton’s sepulchral croon, then repeated in the light choral tones of collaborators Juice Voice Ensemble.

Or maybe it’s because the semi-improvised music never quite settles into a familiar shape, instead staying fluid, strange and wholly distinctive throughout. The various players’ malleable larynxes create an array of unusual textures and effects – whistling birdsong, staccato groans, spectral arias, beatboxed coughs – and it’s easy to forget that most of what’s heard was performed a cappella in a single take, accompanied only by Broughton’s plucked six-string. Fifty-one minutes is a long time to sustain such curious witchery, and the aesthetic flags on some of the album’s longer tracks; in all other regards, however, this is an unorthodox beauty. [Chris Buckle]