Search - Cactus Hunters :: Something Gone

Scrapbook of beautiful songs

Kokomo | SF, CA | 09/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Something Gone, with songs like You and Me, Last Tango in Paris and Beautiful Sadness, is definately more lyrical than the debut album, which allows the singer to explore more emotional experiences. What is so outstanding about this album is the poetic quality of the lyrics and unique musical texture of each individual song. While there is a tension between what the singer is singing about and what the sounds of the songs convey, Cactus Hunters succeed in being lyrical with the vivid imagery of each song without being self-indulgent or confessional. Broken Down echoes subtly with lyrics embraced by Bob Dylan, which makes the song distantly familiar at first, however Cactus Hunters still manages to bring something new to that phrase by singing about such a seemingly depressing or "down" topic and setting it to an upbeat and almost whimiscal-line-dancing-sort-of-musical-landscape. Juckas sings with intonations and inflections, holding on to certain sounds longer than others and varying his ennunciation of words as he sings, which adds even more emotion than the lyrics themselves can express. Always interested in capturing different layers of sounds, Cactus Hunters further experiments with the texture of music in the song, Waiting on the Moon, by repeating the last lines of the chorus in the sound of a "radio call" as though the singer really is waiting on the moon. This album really is a journey on a "broken down road" through a musical scrapbook of experiences from Arizona to Paris to Mexico to even the moon! By taking familiar, every day objects, such as a postcard, and adding a fresh twist, Cactus Hunters paints a clear picture of the song, Beautiful Sadness, as the listener can just imagine the "postcards of your heart all over the place." With surprisingly pungent lyrics like, "the light is much too bright in here for how you look tonight," Cactus Hunters confronts the listener with bittersweet truths of disillusioning experiences of love lost. Although there is an immediate sense of loss or something gone in these songs, there is also something gained, something preserved from that loss: the beautiful sadnesss and transcendence of this scrapbook of songs."