Before I begin my gushing again for another Hands on the Plow release, I’d like to take a quick moment to wipe off the drool and give a quick criticism that has marred the label so far. That is, “where you gonna hide” Beckett and Taylor? With each passing year between releases, I’ve only been able to carry these tumbling tracks with the sad fact, like a hole in my pocket, that I’d have another year to wait for the next. No more, damn it. With Todd Burn’s recent Influx profile on the label, there’s no asterisk that footnotes my impatience for the label’s next release after (Hired New Hands). The opening cut “Where There You Been Gone Find It” takes bare-bone house structure and tickling voice-tweaks while adding the one thing that might describe the Hand on the Plow phenomenon in a short sampled nutshell: the sound of a screw twisting into a knot of wood. For all the group’s accumulated descriptions as loose or haphazard, their samples find that specific texture that is able to be twisted to the point that the underpinning screw will never fall out. Caro amplifies it, remixing the duo’s earlier track, “Hand on the Plow” with a sure touch. B-side “Hoody” might contort less, but the track’s slow burn makes up for any absence of revolution and finishes out another solid single.

Hand On The Plow / hotp003
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[Nate DeYoung]