maybe starry skies

Like a flower that a blooms in the darkness, Greg Prickman's Chuzzlewit project seems to thrive out of the limelight. His releases are obscure and limited, which somehow seems perfectly appropriate for music so effective in essaying the isolation and solitude of its creator that listening feels uncomfortably akin to eavesdropping. Recording to two- and four-track, Prickman couches his warm, world-weary voice in little more than droning guitars and rudimentary rhythm tracks. He's closer in sound and spirit to cynical romantics like Hood, East River Pipe, Flying Saucer Attack, Galaxie 500 and other lo-fi shoegazers than the ironic miserablists like Lou Barlow or Bright Eyes. His songs are hauntingly intimate, made all the more moving for their stark simplicity.

For ten years Chuzzlewit has slowly been turning out recordings, first on cassette on his own Low Voltage label, then later on for the magnificent Earworm Records. Although he has never played live, the closest he says he has come was when he was living here, where I do, in Bloomington, IN. He had been arranging some songs with Early Day Miners frontman Dan Burton, but he moved before it could see the light of day. Finishing touches are being applied and covers are being designed for a brand new Chuzzlewit album, An Experimental Index of the Heart, on Low Voltage. And for a limited time, we can order direct from the man himself the first three Chuzzlewit cassettes transferred to CDRs, as well as a new limited version of A Map of Maybes that was on Earworm.

Chuzzlewit - Ten Minutes Till
Chuzzlewit - A Sparrow in Short