DM Stith: Pigeonheart review – outsider Americana meets electronic noise

It’s no surprise that DM Stith’s career has been encouraged and endorsed by Sufjan Stevens; the Indiana artist’s strand of outsider Americana takes on the left-leaning mid-00s indie scene and detonates its plaintiveness with industrial electronics. The followup to Heavy Ghost is urgent, if a little ambiguous. My Impatience features an engulfing wall of noise that, by the end, sounds like a furious flock of birds descending and pecking apart a computer at the climax of a nightmare. Nimbus bleeps and reels like R2-D2 gatecrashing a church service, and Rooster rattles and soars, like Grizzly Bear trapped in a washing machine on full spin, bones knocking, wheels turning, a froth of melancholy gradually accumulating at the edges. Pigeonheart is a dense and immersive listen imbued with an odd spirituality; but unlike, say Age of Adz, the heart and warmth within sometimes remain frustratingly buried beneath layers of alien affectations.