Carl Simmons - Honeysuckle Tendrals Though decades younger than most of the albums that appear in this column, Carl Simmons 1999 album Honeysuckle Tendrals definitely falls into a lost gem category that has much to do with artists
like Skip Spence, Kevin Ayers, Bobby Beausoleil, Twink and other strange outsider genius that fell on deaf ears at certain times. His album was handed out at shows with little other proliferation at the time but now Sacred Bones is making it available once again for the world to hear. Simmons' songs are cracked views that seep through the walls like far off children's hymns. Otherworldly, strangely innocent and unhinged at the same time Simmons strums the strings of a tattered guitar in accompaniment of a voice that's elfin and effected with tape hiss swaddling the recordings in a manner that bespeaks a diary of necessity rather than an album intended for release. But its Simmons' sweetness that culls the madness that would put unadventurous souls off immediately, once you get to that core of gentle fragility its melts all the "outsider" trappings away. Listen close. Download: [MP3] Carl Simmons - Corporation Sunday [MP3] Carl Simmons - Kaspar Hauser Support the artist. Buy it: HERE