performer

Testface – Doctor Won’t You Get Us to Dawn

Recorded by George Ayres & Jake Baker at Sleepsound Studios
Mixed and Produced by George Ayres, Jake Baker, and& David Snider
Mastered by Kevin Nettleingham

Testface’s David Snider has developed his own musical world where the blatant eccentricities of the privileged new crop of psych-folkers are abandoned in favor of layer after subtle layer of Americana. Too weird to be immediately embraced by the No Depression set, and too structured to be loved by fans of tape loop ‘n’ dobro playin’ Scandanavians, Snider’s decade-long labor of love, Doctor Won’t You Get Us to Dawn, instead feels like the creation of an isolated rural homesteader who finally got himself on the grid.

The prolific recluse has only one other full-length album (1998’s What to Cut) and numerous cassettes since 1995. If those cassettes contain rough sketches of Doctor’s fully realized songs, then they' ‘re worth tracking down for clues to how Snider ended up with such a rich combination of folk, rural psychedelia, and found sounds. Testface doesn’t shy away from technology, as evidenced by the detuned synthesizers on the opening “All the Glass Prayers,” nor do Snider and his collaborators hesitate to weave in typewriters, glockenspiels, and coins swirling upon a tabletop to add to the unstable calm of the album. Lyrically, Snider strays towards the impenetrable, but the tale of failing aristocracy in “Kings Castle” and the POV musings of a disaffected actor and professional boxer in “Picture Picture” provide more than enough to consider while absorbing the musical nuances.

Doctor benefits from repeated listenings. The overall spare sound of the record masks its density of new ideas on how to complement music stemming from rural American traditions with sounds that only electricity and processors could make possible. Testface might reside in a lonely world, but Snider’s creation is finally reaching out to those who love to poure through the details. (Broken Sparrow Records/Sleepsound Records)

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-Peter Hanlon