Gnomonsong recording artist, Jana Hunter will be undertaking U.S. dates in support of the release of Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom her debut album proper. This is the inaugural release on Gnomonsong, the label founded by Devendra Banhart and Vetiver’s Andy Cabic in conjunction with Revolver Distribution. Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom is a collection of songs written over the period of a decade. The album is a thirteen song "best of," recorded on four-tracks, two-tracks, and computers, mostly in Texas and mostly alone.

Jana Hunter is from Arlington, Texas, the fifth of nine children. She played classical violin with full orchestras from age 9, but that doesn't really explain how she came to write such haunting songs. Hunter is one of those rare artists whose craft does its work on listeners before they even notice. Deceptively simple, clear and concise, these songs surround and envelop, seeping into the skin until they are a part of you. Just as striking is her voice, a singular vehicle that traces louche jazz-tinged smoke rings against her stark, splayed guitar playing. If Karen Dalton had lived to record with Ben Chasny as her guitarist they might have created music like this. Here are some reviews of the CD followed by more artist and live show info:

• Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom comes to you courtesy of Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic’s new label, Gnomonsong, but don’t lump Jana Hunter in with the rest of the freak-folks. She’s got her own weird thing going on. The opener, “All The Best Wishes,” plunges the listener into an eerily aquatic sound space that’s both nostalgic and futuristic. Ambient doo-wop might be the best tag for this strange, slow-mo lament. Ghostly fiddle, appealing vocal harmonies and loose guitar picking mark Blank, but Hunter’s unpredictable; just listen to “K,” where the vocals ride the rigid rhythm of a Casio preset. The singing might evoke Marc Bolan, but who else would have wedded the dirty little keyboard’s beats to this great tune? Or written the non sequitur;” I’d love to sell your backbone to my fans/I’ll be your favorite cartoon”? Evidently, Hunter wrote Blank’s songs over a 10-year period. Hope the muse pays her a bunch of visits real soon. Fred Cisterna/Harp Jan./Feb

• 2004’s Golden Apples of The Sun, a Devendra Banhart-compiled anthology, included Joanna Newsom and Antony. But no voice proved as out-of-nowhere stunning as the dewy hayloft whisper of Jana Hunter. Her enigmatic roadside paean, “Farm, CA,” contains a choir of warped strings and has all the atmosphere of cricket and tumbleweed sounds broadcast by AM radio. For those who missed it, the track shows up halfway through the 27-year-old Texan’s debut. (Hunter has issued a vinyl-only split LP with Banhart and played in Matty & Mossy, but Heirs of Doom is her true coming-out party.) Hunter trained as a classical violinist, but her spectral road songs summon a dusty four-track Ella Fitzgerald. Jolie Holland makes for another decent comparison but only if Holland sliced and diced her neo-standards with the Microphones’ boomy, hissy sonic textures. The 13 tracks on Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, written over the course of a decade, are impressively varied. Songs crackle with melancholy violin, sweat-lodge psychedelia flanges, and a toy keyboard transforms a playful love song into lo fi dance pop. Mostly, Hunter intones to her rusty guitar about drunken notes penned before sleep, the poems of “holy unknowns.” Hunter recently flirted with life in Brooklyn, but she has now moved back to Austin. The Lone Star return makes sense; if she’d remained in New York, these hymns would have absolutely nowhere to breathe. Brandon Stosuy/Magnet Jan./Feb.

• Recorded predominantly on two-and four-tracks, Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom features Hunter performing almost entirely alone, collecting songs written over the course of a decade. Had it appeared 10 years ago, it would likely have been bundled alongside the lo-fi brigades rather than as part of any broad based folk movement. Although primarily constructed of Hunter's vocals and non-electric instruments, these songs otherwise owe very little to folk tradition, and instead draw much of their disheveled allure from her deliberately grainy, inorganic edits and overdubs. Her performances here brim with a heightened, lonesome yearning that summon the faintest trace of country twang, at times suggestive of Edith Frost's demo material as transmitted via an erratic dashboard AM radio. … But despite this album's loose and protracted creation, these songs all hang together with a natural, cohesive grace, sounding as if they had all simultaneously occurred to Hunter in one seismic burst of production. The sole exception might be the closing "K", which ends the album with an unexpected Casio blip of early Magnetic Fields style pop, as she sings "I'd love to sell your backbone to my friends/ I'd be your favorite cartoon." And though one suspects this to be a lyric Banhart wishes he had written, nowhere is it more apparent that Jana Hunter is her own artist; ready and deserving to be considered on her own singular merits. - Matthew Murphy/Pitchforkmedia.com 11/16/05

• Much of the new album employs bare-bones acoustic guitar and the ominous echoes of lo-fi recording, with Hunter channeling ghosts from bygone eras. “Farm, Ca.,” featured on Banhart’s The Golden Apples Of The Sun comp, achieves doomsday bliss with a few cryptic words and jagged violin. Other songs, like “Hunter’s Den” have lyrics that are laden with diversions and metaphor—half the fun is traversing lines like “No, darling, don’t tempt me with your prosthesis and shy cogentry, sounds like driftwood in the sea of plenty.” REED FISCHER/CMJ New Music Monthly January

• …In fact, many of the songs sound as if they could very well have been written completely stream-of-consciousness, but that's not the only thing that makes this album so unbelievably haunting and memorable.

  There's also her voice, which has this strange, desolate quality about it, but is not at all depressing. If anything, it's more hopeful and even sensual at times. Hunter also has a real gift for keeping listeners wondering what she's going to do next. She experiments with sounds and genres that result in unexpectedly engaging tracks, such as the delightful church choir feel of "The Earth Has No Skin," the string-laden "Heatseeker's Safety Den," and the stripped-down "Farm, CA." The latter song is an absolutely gorgeous number that wouldn't sound out of place in the film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath…

  As much of an insight Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom gives to Jana Hunter as a person, with thoughts as exquisitely beautiful as the songs presented here, let's hope that she's willing to share some more with us sometime soon. Dean Ramos/Venus Winter 2005

Jana has been doing solo performances off on and since she was 18 as well as playing in a series of idiosyncratic local Houston-based bands including Ejaculette (tribute to hair metal), Jracula (still somewhat alive kind of stones/bowie band), the Szok (noise band), Invisible Robot Fish (improv collective long gone), Slang (cover band of a wicked sort), and Slord (wicked sludge metal band). She began playing out regularly with “Matty & Mossy” with whom she also recorded the Fraimers Hamey CD. This outfit broke up after a year when a car landed on and busted her bandmate’s hand. Since then she’s carried on as a solo artist with her previous solo offerings being self-released efforts sold at her shows.

She wrote her first song while sitting by herself on the beach in Mendocino, CA at age 14, a “silly little song.” Her creative inspirations come from all areas of the arts: David Lynch was important for something he said about waiting for something to happen instead of forcing creativity, plus the context in which he placed songs like “Blue Velvet” in his films. The songs of her friend Arthur Bates for his allowance for imperfection were a major influence as well as singing along to Ella Fitzgerald records which she feels made her a better singer than she could have become otherwise.

Last year, Jana made her first big splash among fans of distinctive music with her track “Farm, CA” on the Banhart-curated Golden Apples of the Sun collection released by Arthur Magazine’s CD label. She’s also released a vinyl-only split release with Devendra on the Troubleman label.

JANA HUNTER TOUR DATES

• 3/23/06 San Diego, CA 4862 Voltaire
• 3/24/06 Los Angeles, CA Echo
• 3/25/06 San Francisco, CA Amoeba Records (Afternoon In store)
• 3/25/06 San Francisco, CA Hotel Utah
• 3/27/06 Portland, OR, Holocene
• 3/28/06 Vancouver, BC Pat's Pub
• 3/29/06 Seattle, WA S.S. Marie Antoinette
• 3/31/06 Boise, ID Neurolux
• 4/1/06 Salt Lake City, UT Kilby Court
• 4/2/06 Denver, CO Hi Dive
• 4/4/06 Lawrence, KS Jackpot Saloon
• 4/5/06 Des Moines, IA Vaudeville Mews
• 4/6/06 Northfield, MN the Cave
• 4/7/06 Chicago, IL Open End Gallery
• 4/8/06 Detroit, MI Magic Stick
• 4/9/06 Grand Rapids, MI Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts
• 4/10/06 Lansing, MI Mac's
• 4/13/06 Buffalo, NY Soundlab
• 4/14/06 Toronto, ON Sneaky Dee's
• 4/16/06 Cambridge, MA Great Scott
• 4/17/06 Hoboken, NJ Maxwell's
• 4/18/06 New York, NY Northsix
• 4/19/06 Philadelphia, PA the Khyber

For more information, contact Howard at:

Howlin' Wuelf Media
527 Barclay Ave.
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