Rafter — Music For Total Chickens

Rafter Roberts seems like one weird dude. The latest great folk hope from the Asthmatic Kitty crew, Rafter plays an unusual strain of folk that he treats with odd electronic fills, snippets of female vocals and various other bits and bytes of studio nonsense. Music for Total Chickens is chock full of these descriptors and, at worst, it's a curious novelty. The most obvious touchstone here is Neutral Milk Hotel, and much like that band's leader, Jeff Mangum, Rafter has a definite taste for stilted melodies and wonky arrangements. However, he takes things several degrees to the left of traditional indie rock. Fleeting tunes "Gentle Men" and "Hope" really have no parallels. Rafter's music is either a revelation or a bad joke. Either way, Music For Total Chickens is an album that comes fully baked.