I have a friend who is the director of several homeless shelters in Athens, Ohio. He's the king of a dubious empire, and business is booming. Athens is tucked away in the southeast corner of the state, thirty miles from the West Virginia border. There may be a higher percentage of homeless people in and around Athens, Ohio than in any other town in America. There's a 20,000-student university there, and a few thousand former coal miners who, if they work at all, now work at the Taco Bell on Court Street or the Wal-Mart out on State Street because those are the only jobs to be found. The coal is long gone, and anybody with any sense gets the hell out of Dodge as soon as they clutch that precious degree. It's a wonderful, picturesque college town, and it's a desperate, unforgiving place to make a stand and try to make a life. It's Appalachia and academia, town and tattered gown, and it offers a unique perch from which to articulate the shabbiness.

And perhaps that's why Southeast Engine -- Athens natives a few years removed from the graduation ceremony, and still hanging out in that idyllic little college town -- sound like they do. You can tell that lead singer/songwriter Adam Remnant has his English degree, and he drops enough literary references to make sure you know he’s spent some time in old Ellis Hall. But there’s a restlessness and desperation at the heart of his music that suggests that the old Athens malaise has already set in, and that feeling trapped isn’t the exclusive domain of suburban executives with midlife crises and cherry red sports cars. His band plays what has often been described as Americana, alt-country, roots rock. Pick your label. All I know is that Remnant sounds a lot like Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, that the soulfulness in his world-weary rasp is palpable, and that his band makes the kind of racket that Tweedy and company did before they decided to get all arty and experimental on us and mix in the radio static and amplifier hum.

There are three albums now – Love is a Murder, a Mystery of Sorts, Coming to Terms with Gravity, and the new one, A Wheel Within a Wheel, which is one of my favorite albums of 2007. A few of the songs try too hard. But most of the time Remnant gets it just right, a smart guy hanging out in a place where religious loonies handle snakes, and where nobody can get a job. He’s longing for truth, longing to be someone better than he is, full of faith and doubt, spooked by spirits and spooked by the image that stares back at him from the mirror. He’s a wonderful songwriter, and Southeast Engine is a very fine band.

We stayed up all night talking
Just to understand what goes on
When you're sleepwalking
What goes through your head
Because you say you don't remember
You were walking through the walls
And like a ghost your heart is ancient
But your mind just can't recall
So cover yourself in a long white sheet
And cut two holes for your eyes
Your spirit weeps when your mouth declares
That this life is just to die

And you will not survive the cost of life
You'll be buried in the ground
Or burned into tiny ashes
And swept across the land
But what matters is bound to show somewhere
Your blood will soon transform
Into another form of life
You don't leave you just return
So cover yourself in a long white sheet
And follow the path to the holy sea
Let the water forgive your sin
Until your mind is totally emptied

It's the father, it's the son, it's the holy ghost
This is what I had feared the most
It's the father, it's the son, it's the holy ghost
This is what I had feared the most
This is joy, this is pain, this is relentless
This is stating the obvious
This is joy, this is pain, this is relentless
This is stating the obvious
-- Southeast Engine, "Holy Ghost"

In one of their more headscratching moments ever, Pitchfork reviews the latest Southeast Engine album A Wheel Within a Wheel, which is now about a year old. But it's a fine review of an album that was my second favorite album of 2007.

This is the best alt-country/indie rock band you've never heard, particularly if you like Wilco and biblical imagery.

The p'fork review did not escape my attention this morning.

I actually held a copy of Wheel Within A Wheel during my new-year-blowout spree a couple months back, at a store (Earshot in Greenville SC) that I expected would have it; and they didn't let me down.
But the instinct of self-preservation is sometimes stronger than the allure of new music. I put it (and a few others) back in the rack, lest I be beaten about the head with a bag of CD's upon returning home for blowing the budget on music.

But now, it's back at the top of my list again.

This album is the real deal, and Andy is spot on it. I got it yesterday afternoon with my monthly eMusic downloads, and I haven't been able to stop spinning it. The chorus of "Quit While You're Ahead" maybe be one of the most aurally joyous things I've heard in a while.

I love these guys. I obviously love the music, but as I've gotten to know the band members I ... well, I love these guys. There's an honesty and integrity that comes through in the songs, but it's there in their personal lives as well. There's a new album currently in the works, and which should be out this fall.

And for a slightly different perspective, here is my review that appears in the current issue of Christianity Today Magazine.

This review was what got me on the ball to get A Wheel Within a Wheel — we got the new CT issue in at work and I was hooting and hollering that you were in it, and then remembered the praise you'd given the album before. Thanks for steering me in the right direction with this.

The band has finished recording their next long-player, From the Forest to the Sea, and it should be out on Misra Records in early 2009. Like Frank Black did with some of his more recent albums, they recorded it live to tape as a four-piece. Color me extremely excited!

The band is also recording Daytrotter Sessions in Chicago soon (or maybe it was this past weekend?). Stay tuned for that.

I've been listening to Southeast Engine's new album From the Forest to the Sea, due out in February on Misra Records. Musically, the band has punted the alt-country influences entirely, emerging with an amalgam of folkie gospel, angular indie rock that recalls Pavement and Sebadoh, and some wondrously cheesy circus organ/calliope that reminds me of the work of Steve Nieve, the keyboard guy from Elvis Costello's Attractions. Oh yeah, there's some honky tonk piano in there, too. Lead singer/songwriter Adam Remnant's raw, soaring vocals are double and triple-tracked, and there are times, particularly on the closing track, when he reminds me of a choir of Ralph Stanley's. Yes, that's a very good thing. So we sort of end up with Appalachian indie circus music.

Lyrically, Remnant reminds me more and more of folks such as Mark Heard, David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), and Bill Mallonee (Vigilantes of Love). By that I mean there is a clear Christian context in which these songs emerge, and there is biblical imagery galore, but these are songs of struggle and doubt. There are songs about knowing the right thing to do, and doing the wrong thing anyway. There are songs about losing the thread, the vision that connects our souls to all that is worthwhile and meaningful. There's a song in which Remnant, apparently as part of some mystical vision, ascends towards the heavens to grasp the hand extended toward him, only to be slapped back to earth and told that it's not his time yet. Hoo boy. It's either incredibly gutsy or incredibly foolish to write stuff life this, but I'm inclined to go with the former. But mostly these are songs made by and for screwups. Since I seem to fall into that camp, I take some solace in knowing that somebody's turned my life into a musical.

It's a wonderful, and wonderfully strange, album. I'm sure I'll be writing more about it as its official release approaches.

Thanks for the update, Andy. To show you the sort of fan I've become, I've been checking Daytrotter.com daily in a feverish haze because I know the band recorded some stuff for their sessions. Your description makes me more anxious.

I like what you say about them lyrically, too; if indeed any of the songs off of their previous two albums are autobiographical, they show a lot of wrestling going on, and it's captivating (and tough) stuff. I blast A Wheel Within A Wheel in my car often, and sometimes break down and cry at the mixture of emotions (coupled with the harmonies) at the end of "Fortune Teller." If the new album ups the ante on this, man, I'm going to be a weepy mess.

I'm listening to the new record right now, and I'm very impressed by it. But it's my first Southeast Engine album, so I'm eager to hear how the longtime fans of the band compare this to the previous three records.

Yay!

I'm on their street team now, whatever that means (maybe a copy of the new album? Mayne not.)

I'll say this, Josh: as similar the last three albums were stylistically, there is a huge progression between each one. They're really worth hearing. I would've easily put their previous release, A Wheel Within A Wheel, at #1 for 2008 if it hadn't been released in 2007.

As is I'm sure evident from the comments above, I love this band.

I've reviewed From the Forest to the Sea for an upcoming issue of Paste, so I can't say too much. In terms of comparisons with the earlier work, the new album is, in general, a little quieter, and a lot less beholden to Americana/alt-country influences. But the highlight, as it always is, is Adam Remnant's songwriting. The guy is a true loopy mystic visionary/asshole loved by God, and sometimes that leads to awkward lines that make me wince, and sometimes leads to lines that are absolutely startling in their aptness and truth. As a fellow asshole loved by God, I am always grateful to find musicians who want to explore that territory. The title of the album, and the song titles, indicate some sort of journey, which suggests a concept album of sorts to me. God only knows what that concept might be. I don't. But there are many moments of ragged beauty here -- "The Forest, Pt. 3," where Remnant soars off into a mystic vision of flying above the trees, "Malcontent," which has him sounding like a deranged serial killer Christian, "In Search of Noah's Ark," which features the kind of careening, surrealistic imagery that Bob Dylan might have written in 1966, but with a decided Christian subtext. That said, I think it's slightly inferior to 2007's A Wheel Within a Wheel, but only because that album was uniformly great. This one is not, and has some uneven moments. But it has many very fine, revelatory moments as well.