Yes, you're reading that right, a new Devin Davis track. On Kill Rock Stars.

Straight to the bad news, then: despite his new song being released on KRS, and despite last year's frustrated mass of CMGers fawning in a hyperbolic chorus about his debut in an attempt to avoid a clarification like this, this isn't a cut from his (nonexistent) future KRS release. Turns out, Davis was picked by the label just for this comp. So, unfortunately and unfairly and against the sorely misguided judgment of people in a position to change this, he's still on a label (Mousse) that's run out of his (self-designed) website. Which sort of adds up to to selling merch out the back of a van. A van with some awesome mp3s and funny pictures, but a fucking van nevertheless. It doesn't need to be this way.

He promises a discount home & office supplies store and an aircraft fleet when Mousse takes off, sure, and while I'm certain his stationary would be bold and his flights courteous, we need this guy to focus on his music. Step one: give him, and the still fantabulous Lonely People of the World, Unite! actual distribution. KRS, come on, you can release a full record by a band that Colin Meloy abandoned a decade ago but Devin Davis struggles to get a song on a compilation? What the hell's going on here?

Anyway, the good news is the song: "When the Angels Lift Our Eyelids in the Morning" opens The Sound the Hare Heard, an extensive 21 track collection of sparse non-freak folk; like a less eccentric counterpart to Banhart's Golden Apples of the Sun, but not much more upbeat. Davis uses the occasion to go full-out Dylan: squawking harmonica over some bright open chords and a lifting, ballad-structured melody. His voice cracks and stretches his personality all over the track, elevating the straightforward melody and giving its playful-yet-poetic imagery ("Snow storms in our TV sets, black forests beneath our beds / They lie in wait where no one hears to play the drums inside our ears") a charming tone.

While it doesn't have the tempo or range of of his best material, it's reaffirming to hear him pull a song like this out of such a cliched acoustic-'n-harmonica approach. Not to mention a little frustrating, knowing he's also capable of breaking out something like fourteen other instruments that he plays, records, arranges, mixes, probably even fucking builds from trees he planted when he was five. It makes "When the Angels'" restraint sound like he's warming up for something bigger, but that's probably also got to do with the subject he's taking on, I suppose. For now Davis is putting a captivating spin on waking up; just imagine what he can do with the rest of his day.

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