Album of the Year? Yeah, Just Maybe…

At least one BLURT editor and one BLURT writer feel that way. It's because, as Glen Hansard says, "The Conformist is just fucking beautiful."

By Blurt Staff

Posted to the site this morning is our CD review of Doveman's The Conformist, issued recently by the Brassland label. So why are we also posting a news item about the album? See the dek, above.

Reviewer Ian Mathers awards it a "10" out of 10 possible stars, and we don't chuck that many stars in the direction of an artist lightly. But it really is one of the year's finest efforts, something we sensed might be waiting in the wings for Doveman, a/k/a Thomas Bartlett, ever since his 2007 album With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead and, more recently, his 2008 recasting/reimagining of the Footloose soundtrack - the latter left us so smitten we even ran a feature on it, which you can read here. Bartlett has been working with folks like the Swell Season and the National, and he's greatly admired in certain artistic circles, but we suspect with this new album he'll be hailed as one of America's premiere young composers and performers in his own right.

At any rate, you need to take a look at Mathers' review, and more to the point, you need to hear The Conformist. Writes Mathers, "Normally with a record this gorgeous and accomplished I wouldn't spend much or any time talking about the guest musicians; the music is so great that doing so feels like a waste of words.  But The Conformist is so good, and Thomas Bartlett's music as Doveman is usually so undervalued, that I'll take pretty much any opportunity to get people interested."

Needless to say, we agree. It's because the album is just fucking beautiful.