Rockbites: Rivulets announce US shows in support of debut album

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Rivulets announce US shows in support of debut album
4 March 2002

Minneapolis-based minimalist songwriter, guitarist, vocalist, and Low protégé Nathan Amundson aka Rivulets released his debut album 22 January on Duluth, Minnesota’s Chair Kickers’ Union label. He’s just announced a set of eight mostly-midwest US shows in support of the release, commencing 14 March in Austin at the South By Southwest festival.
    The new, self-titled album is disconcerting, even shocking, in its quietness—percussion is minimal or absent on most songs, and there’s often so little going on that the music seems on the verge of disappearing into dark silence.
    But as iconoclastic as this presentation is, it is not melodramatic, as it might seem to surely be on your first several listens. Trying to understand Rivulets from a perspective of melodrama just doesn’t work, especially in light of the minimalist, abstract, stream of consciousness lyrics. The profundity here is in what’s missing. This is solipsism. Step inside a truly sad mind.
    In another context, any one of these songs could serve as the extreme low point on an emotionally charged roller coaster of an ultra-emotional album. But one after the other, Amundson’s songs create a dreamlike mood of impenetrable, swirling darkness. With production help from Low’s Alan Sparhawk, Amundson has created a study in the beauty of sadness.
    On the other hand, this is just my interpretation—which necessarily says at least as much about the reviewer as the reviewee. Amundson tells Rockbites, “I don’t necessarily view Rivulets as being sad. In making the album I was definitely going for a sense of space and stillness and quietude, and oftentimes those things seem to be translated or heard as sad.
    “There is melancholy there... [but] I don’t have any sort of emotional agenda to convey. These are just my little songs that I try to do as honestly as possible.”
    Joining Amundson on the Rivulets LP are Jay Kroehler (bass, effects, xylophone, cymbals—and who is no longer in the band), Mimi Parker from Low (voice, percussion), Alan Sparhawk, also from Low (voice, baritone guitar, shaker), and LD Beghtol from Moth Wranglers and The Magnetic Fields (ukulele, shruti box).
    Daring to make an album of trancelike depressiveness—and succeeding in the process to fabricate a work of quiet beauty—gets Rivulets four bites out of five.

Rockbites ratings  5: life changing, 4: stunning, 3: captivating, 2: amusing, 1: annoying.

Upcoming US Rivulets dates are

March
14 - Austin, TX (The Drink @ SXSW fest)
16 - New Orleans, LA (The Mermaid Lounge)
23 - Minneapolis, MN (Sursumcorda)

April
  8 - Chicago, IL (Empty Bottle)
  9 - Moline, IL (The Chai Cafe)
10 - Iowa City, IA (Gabe’s Oasis)
11 - Minneapolis, MN (400 Bar)
12 - Duluth, MN (NorShor Theatre)

| Rivulets | | Rivulets on mp3.com | | interview on Sadcore | | PayPal | | top of page |

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