“Take a minute while I wander/Compose myself for you,” sings All Smiles’ Jim Fairchild on his band’s debut. It’s a punful salvo—the singer is composing himself emotionally and literally composing the songs that make up Ten Readings Of A Warning—but the cute wordplay stops there; this is an album that comes with aching emotional honesty. The brainchild of Fairchild (ex-Grandaddy) Ten Readings is a largely acoustic affair, the eleven numbers coming in sweeping, almost wind-swept lullabies laced with reflection and regret. The breezy “Summer Stay” examines the fleeting nature of time; “Killing Sheep” tackles the mental overdrive of a sleepless night and the gentle country of “Pile Of Burning Leaves” brings to mind Holopaw’s best work. Elsewhere, the marching pop of “Moth In A Cloud Of Smoke” is an homage to reinvention and romantic recovery; “Leave Love” is a swaying meditation on morality and the spare “Backward, Forward, Through” is a fractured lullaby that urges patience on the road to self-actualization. Heady stuff, indeed, but Fairchild’s voice is a knowing guide and he sings with such sincerity and weathered wisdom, it’s hard not to see this is a handbook for getting it all together. That way, when you fall apart next, you’ll have somewhere to go.
--Alex Green
