Reviews

What has two hidden tracks, features ex-Epitaph Records’ band Osker’s frontman, and despite the super intense name plays mellow Americana folk?  Well, since you’re reading a review for Fingers Cut Megamachine it would be foolish to assume it was any other band. FCMM are coming out at a time when sometimes the punk world seems contrived and yet a slew of new artists are making astonishingly honest music by combining their punk rock roots with a new breed of folk music.  Fingers Cut Megamachine, Devon William’s new LA based band steps out of the punk rock mold and crafts 13 joyous songs of acoustic introspection on an eleven track album.  
 
You won’t find any diatribes about the government in FCMM’s work, despite the presence of a producer/ mixer who worked with both Leftover Crack and their previous incarnation Choking Victim.  Instead Devon WIlliams takes a more organic approach to viewing the country.  Most of the songs, with their quiet acoustic shuffle, are the perfect soundtrack to actually getting to know the country.  As the record plays through it’s images of water and wind, roads and the morning light, you feel the country fly past you as seen through rolled up car windows.  You put your feet up on the dash, glance at the speedometer, remark on the passing yellow trees, but you haven’t left your stereo.    “Oh my widow,” Devon Williams laments, “what are you hiding?”  America is his widow, and FCMM is his love song to her as she drifts away into a terrifying future. 
 
His voice is at times reminiscent of Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, but always uniquely his own.  The sparse and simple arrangements of acoustic, bass, and drums call to mind a mellow Bright Eyes or perhaps Iron and Wine.  Fingers Cut Megamachine is texture and treasured step away from the anger and frustration of Osker’s last album, Idle WIll Kill, but it addresses the same subjects, albeit from a different angle.  A necessary counterpoint to directives of change, FCMM shows what is so great about America that needs to be preserved; small moments, images, “the beauty of town.”