Ben Trickey Won’t Be Pinned Down

After covering new ground late last year with the band Burnt Sky, Ben Trickey goes back to basics with two stripped-down, folk-inspired songs. They’ll be featured on a forthcoming split 7-inch with North Carolina songwriter Charles Walker (not the Dynamites soul belter, mind you), out July 27.

As usual, Trickey’s side builds a sense of sorrow. He sings about “Swallowing Poison,” after all. Yet there’s a glimmering sense of hope peeking through the clouds on that song and on “Termite Life.”

Walker’s side offers the relatively upbeat “Sorted Out” and “Crutch.” Both sound more like what you’d expect from a Southern singer-songwriter, offering a nice contrast to Trickey’s harder to pin down approach.

In another recent Trickey situation, a remix version of his Horizon Line Fires album with Burnt Sky is available online, featuring remixes by Caesium Mine (a.k.a. Atlanta musician and sound guy extraordinaire Andrew Wiggins), Old Fat God (author Douglas Milliken) and others. It turns an already weird departure from the expected into an unlikely industrial mixtape.