If musical minimalism grates on your every nerve and you can't imagine listening to an album that is devoid of effects or production trickery, please move along; this is not the album for you. In contrast, if you enjoy your music stripped down to its bare bones and placed in front of you with nothing to cover up its occasional flaws, then this raw effort from Jindra will give your ears a huge dose of the lo-fi you crave.

As its title rather obviously implies, Guitar + Voice: Volume One is a single acoustic guitar accompanied by a single voice. There is no bass or percussion, and not a keyboard or string section to be heard -- nor is there even a backing vocal harmony. Guitar and voice. It's really that simple. This much simplicity can sometimes be difficult to listen to; there is nothing to distract, so the listener is forced to really listen. Somehow, Jindra makes this less of a chore and more of an enjoyable experiment in attention-span measurement. The ability to capture a listener's attention for nearly an hour is a regrettably rare skill for artists in almost any genre, but in this context it's particularly laudable.

It would be a mistake to assume that the compositional bareness of Guitar + Voice automatically makes it a quiet album. True, there are plenty of quiet moments, but changes in tempo here and there and movements in vocal intensity keep Jindra's music from being classified as "music for a long nap on a rainy day". "I Swear I Hear Them Laughing" could rouse even the sleepiest listener with its furiously fast, then abruptly slow guitar work. Lyrically, Jindra has enough odd lines to keep the mind working overtime, trying to decipher their cryptic meanings. The aforementioned song contains this line: "funny little knomes (note: I'm assuming here he means "gnomes") make sky-kites of my flesh". See what I mean?

Guitar + Voice is the first of three planned volumes. Though it's hard to say whether Jindra's minimalist formula can sustain interest over the course of two more albums, this first installment certainly captured mine.