Dust From 1000 Yrs - "Spring" | Album Review

by Jordan Weinstock (@weinstockjordan)

Although Dust From 1000 Yrs' newest endeavor, Spring, was recorded during the days of it’s namesake, it arrives in our hands much later. This seasonal questioning and consistent transience is one that Ben Rector (aka Bone) has lived in over the past decade or so. This doesn’t mean that Rector is unsure of his own music, in fact, he may be one of the most confident humans in the music world right now.

His live performance, something I was blessed with seeing for the first time this summer at the EIS Showcase at Northside Festival, kept me entirely enraptured; this says a lot as I was pretty much jumping out of my clothes waiting to see Ovlov. There’s something beautiful about the way Rector holds a stage captive. With little more than his guitar, a simple drum kit, and a bubble blower he had me shouting along to songs I had never heard before.

Spring differs from DFATY’s last few releases (Moon and the Famous Cigarettes split);  it feels much less tangible in a way, like trying to describe a feeling to someone who hasn’t felt it. Written and recorded fairly soon after having moved to Boston from Indiana, a pretty major change, the tape finds Dust at some of his most vulnerable moments yet. With little more than fingerpicked and slightly dissonant guitars, and drums that feel like they are marching towards the end of time, you are hearing a heart and mind unravel. The album was described to me as “...a document of all the alienation, confusion, depression, and anger…” and indeed I barely have anything to add. Listen to “The Deepest Part” and tell me it doesn’t make you feel; tell me it isn’t one of the rawest and most painful listening experiences you’ve had; tell me you didn’t enjoy it. I would be hard pressed to imagine otherwise.