YOUR FAVORITE MTV SHOWS ARE ON PARAMOUNT+

Campfire Girls

The proliferation of affordable, high-quality digital-recording equipment increasingly means that anyone can make an album at home, away from the daunting hourly rates of "professional" studios. While this sea of change in technology is partly the reason we are being buried under 40,000 new albums a year, its positive impact is apparent in all the quality music no longer tailored to mainstream radio or major label expectations. Musicians from all walks are abandoning commercial considerations in favor of textured instrumentals, vocal interludes and, especially, soundtracks for movies of the mind.

Case in point: Dusty Trails. Keyboardist Vivian Trimble spent some time with New York's girl groovers, Luscious Jackson, and bassist/guitarist Josephine Wiggs with Dayton, Ohio's briefly successful Breeders. Neither one a frontwoman, they instead came together on a side project (the Kostars) and have been collaborating ever since, writing and recording highly visual pieces in a space-age, spaghetti-western, bossa-nova, country style. If that sounds awkward, fear not: Dusty Trails are more your modern and friendly campfire outfit, playing a little of everything that pleases them, than a collision of clashing genres.

The duo's eponymous debut (home-recorded, of course) alternates between instrumentals and vocal tracks. Of the latter, the charming "Est-ce Que Tu..." would sound at home behind a 1960s French Cinema Nouveau love story. "They May Call Me a Dreamer" (RealAudio excerpt) lilts in a lovely 3/4 time signature, while the standout ballad "Fool for a Country Tune" is reminiscent of underrated Brit songsmiths the Beautiful South. "Order Coffee" (RealAudio excerpt) has the added attraction of country legend Emmylou Harris on vocals (though it comes somewhat at the expense of Trimble, whose own fragile voice elsewhere on the album endures an innocent depreciation by contrast).

It's the instrumentals, though, that best allow the pair to indulge their cross-genre mood swings, even if the titles do leave little to the imagination. "Regrets in Border Town" sounds like Ennio Morricone getting together with '80s faux-soul outfit the Style Council, and "Spy in the Lounge" (RealAudio excerpt) calls to mind John Barry jamming with Esquivel over an Air track. And "Conga Style" and "St-Tropez" are exactly as you might imagine them: percussive and sultry.

Call this music "experimental easy-listening" — neither strident enough to warrant serious commercial attention, nor sufficiently

free-form to attract all the independent obsessives. Then again, success for its own sake is no longer Job One, as the freedom to make and release music for one's own (and, with any luck, someone else's) pleasure is increasingly its own reward. And as more Dusty Trails types saddle up, the more charming — if fragmented — our music collections will be for the ride.

Latest News