The Old Ceremony

Django Haskins of Durham, NC’s The Old Ceremony wants to cut the crap. He has no more patience for idealized love songs that seep into your blood like sugary cereal, leaving you tired and empty. In fact, he finds them harmful. With his band’s new album, Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide, their first for Yep Roc Records, Haskins’ artistic awakening reaches full flower. More than any of their past records, Fairytales coheres around a central theme: of awakening to the world as it is and learning… Show more to see the beauty in its harshness. Meditations on love (“Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide,” “The Royal We,” “Day That I Was Born,”), politics (“Sink or Swim”), and scientific progress (“Star by Star”) all return to this central theme, as does the haunting “Beebe, Arkansas,” based on the bizarre phenomenon of 5000 blackbirds dropping dead on a small town overnight two years in a row. It is an album of late night reckonings, punctuated by hopeful blasts of sunshine. And for lovers of classic songcraft, it is a gold mine.

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