Donovan Quinn debuted with the lo-fi psychedelic folk band Verdure, which became very ordinary folk music on the Donovan Quinn & the 13th Month that grew slightly deeper on each succeeding release.
Honky Tonk Medusa is much like the earlier Quinn albums sounding like a slower filled out version of the Strokes on “Laughing City”. The first bright moment of the album is “Night Shift”, a Wilco styled avant-folk phasing out of a ballad into a scrambled fuzz guitar, far away from Nels Cline’s jazzy noise, and cut by an a capella interlude and out with a solemn instrumental; because of Quinn’s similarity to Jeff Tweedy’s vocals and because his tender ballads sound like they could be lost Tweedy demos.
“Shadow on the Stone” is reminiscent of Conner Oberst’s quasi-whimsical country rock. The other bright moment is the solemn electronic and accordion ballad “In the Bag”.
Honky Tonk Medusa a step forward from Your Wicked Man (Your Abuse, 2010), but the journey was taken by too many a decade ago.
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