A genteel codicil to the seemingly endless stream of Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice material currently surfacing on labels big and small, Harem of the Sundrum & the Witness Fig is the debut solo offering from the mysterious collective's leader in name and voice. Better structured than Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice's work, the album seems less interested in spreading abstract experimentation across an expansive canvas than it is in summoning the grumbling, rumbling bucolic acoustic fervor of Graham Parsons or Graham Nash. These ten songs come swathed in a flaky fuzz that's more endearing than disruptive, with buzzing hiss crackling beneath Toth's fractured warble and skeletal acoustic strumming.

Though the album goes a bit off the rails (gangland meowing and a mélange of field recordings) on closer "Warn Winch, pts 2-3", the rest of the disc puts the tunes first, stripping away all the shambolic fragments until there's nothing left but Master Toth's harebrained observations. When he sings "Dole out prescriptions as death recommends" midway through "Vengeance, Pt. 2", it becomes clear that he doesn't necessarily have anythign to say -- he's just looking for a medium to discuss things he's always wondered about. If he plans to be a guitar-toting guerilla or revolutionary folkie, you won't find the evidence here.

It's refreshing to hear a singer/guitarist who doesn't aspire to be Bob Dylan or (perhaps more importantly) Jeff Mangum. Listening to Harem of the Sundrum...'s clumsy charge, you'll get the distinct impression that Toth would continue writing and recording these songs even if no one was listening.