Little Mountain, Wolves for Winter

Little Mountain is the band name for Josh Deeters, who does the typical singer-songwriter thing on Wolves for Winter. The four songs are mostly solo with occasional minimal accompaniment, but the focus is on the guitar and the songs (although Deeters gets in the way on occasion). With one exception, his songs are all about the uncommitted, emotionally unsure young man that everybody was at one point (and might still be, though we’d hope not).

“Draw a Little Heart in the Sand” has a nice melody; lyrically, it’s stream-of-consciousness, and Deeters’s stream just keeps flowing. There’s one nice line in the chorus that goes “footprints like instructions to a strange dance,” but the rest of the lyrics go on a little too long, and the melody can’t sustain them. Moment of foreboding: the first time the song slows down, which Deeters really, really likes to do.

“The Ballad of Fanni + Simon” is the only one that’s not really about himself — it’s about a guy who tries to break his girl out of jail, but he gets thrown in jail with her (okay, if this one is about him, too, I’ll give him a lot more credit). The vocals get a little cheesy, but the story is interesting enough that it’s only mildly irritating. He does the same breakdown thing at the end of “The Ballad of Fanni + Simon” that he did a couple of times in “Draw a Little Heart in the Sand,” which is amusing.

“Thieves” features some pretty guitar work and a decent melody, but the lyrics are kind of vague, circling around his great theme. Then there’s “Oh… Lost Sons,” which, despite its Will Oldham-esque title, turns out to be a long, overdone Bowie-esque folk song (again on his great theme). There’s one nice moment at the end of “Oh… Lost Sons” where the harmonies sound like wolves, but the rest is annoying. And yes, he does that slowing-down thing one more time.

It’s not offensive stuff, and people in their twenties who haven’t heard anything else like it will probably remember it fondly. But for the rest of us who have grown up a little bit, it’s mostly irrelevant — not bad enough to hate, but not good enough to really be worth your time.