Review / 200 Words Or Less
ORSO
Ask Your Neighbor

Contraphonic (2008) Sean K.

ORSO – Ask Your Neighbor cover artwork
ORSO – Ask Your Neighbor — Contraphonic, 2008

One man project by Portland's Phil Spirito, who evidently has a lot of musician friends that helped out with this recording. Sparse, subtle arrangements are the norm for this outing. If I had a dream about this record, I would think it is either Tom Waits or Neil Young crashing an Alan Lomax recording session. Apparently there is such a thing as a tenor banjo. Who knew?

5.5 / 10Sean K. • December 21, 2008

ORSO – Ask Your Neighbor cover artwork
ORSO – Ask Your Neighbor — Contraphonic, 2008

Related features

Horse Torso

One Question Interviews • May 2, 2018

Recently-posted album reviews

Dylan Thomas

Todo se desvanece
Burnt Toast Vinyl (2026)

When bands spend months slowly piecing together an album with cheap gear, limited time, and apparently an alarming amount of terrible beer, it’s kind of romantic. Not romantic in the polished indie film sense. More romantic in the sense that you can actually hear people chasing a feeling before life pulls them in different directions. That tension sits at the … Read more

Adam Steiner

Darker with the Dawn: Nick Cave's Songs of Love and Death
Rowman & Littlefield (2023)

Adam Steiner doesn’t just break the earth with a spade with this book; he actually digs deep into the fertile soil to enter the cobwebbed crypt. He approaches the catalogue like a forensic scientist examining the maggots on a corpse—meticulously analyzing the rot and the details of decay to chart exactly how long the body has been decomposing. He gets … Read more

Six Going on Seven

Human Tears
Spartan Records (2026)

Late 90s post hardcore and emo feels impossible to recreate now. That’s not because the sound itself is gone, but because the tension behind it was so specific to that era. Six Going on Seven’s Human Tears, their first full length in roughly twenty-four years, captures that feeling perfectly. Having a wonderful history by having done a split with Hot … Read more