Pinetop Seven is the creature of Darren Richard (vocals, guitar, piano) and Charles Kim (banjo, harmonium, slide guitar), two Chicago multi-instrumentalists who show a passion for country music and for weird arrangements.

On Pinetop Seven (1996) they were helped by Mona Saraceno (drums, clarinet), John Peeler (bass, harmonica) and Margot Horton (keyboards, saxophone). The combo conjured the demented musichall instrumental overture Tearing It Down At Dawn and the sick melodies of Paramour and 40 Watt Bulb, as well as a bunch of solemn ballads like Skyway To Alice and Tennessee Pride, enough to make any alt-country band pale.

The mini-album No Breath In The Bellows (Truckstop, 1998) reprises some of those songs and broadens the arsenal to vibraphone, marimba, accordion.

On Rigging The Toplights (Truckstop, 1998) the band's ambitions get out of hand in a few overly complicated compositions, but at least The Fear of Being Found and Finding The Lady In Kicking Horse Reservoir recreate the magic of the first album.

The ten musicians who help out on Bringing Home The Last Great Strike (Truckstop, 2000), virtually a solo Darren Richard album (Charles Kim having left), make up a little orchestra, so it is not surprising that a few songs sound like classical concertos.
Richard's ballads are majestic and melancholy. On The Last Ride In has the pace of an acid dream (It's A Beautiful Day, Velvet Underground's early lullabies) and is sung in Chris Isaak's vibrato/falsetto register. For the epic A Black Eye To Be Proud Of Richard's voice spreads over a broad range, from chiming shrill to almost tenor, while a vaudeville piano toys with Caribbean figures. The dirge The Palm Acres Parade encompasses Ennio Morricone's most mournful moments, Tim Buckley's most spaced-out vocals, and renaissance music's elegant demeanor. Orchestral arrangements enhance the noble mantra of Mission District and an even more spiritual quality engulfs And The Dog Longed To Be A Horse, virtually a church hymn at martial pace, drenched in a shower of distorted guitars and vibes (the bridge soaring over clarinets, trumpets, harmonica and banjo).
Richard finds the time for a demented, surreal sketch (At His Kitchen Table) before delving into the triptych of November 4am (a depressed meditation on love), A Friend to the Minnesota Strangler (an emphatic allegory) and Buried in St Cloud (a funereal fanfare for clarinet, trombone, violin, flugelhorn, accordion and cello) that sums up and closes the album.
The tone is subdued and dejected, as if the apocalypse had struck and the survivors were trying to make sense of the judgement. The same solemn melancholy resonates from one end to the other of the album. This is the way Calexico would sound if they played in the city instead of the desert.

The "official bootleg" Lest We Forget (Self-Help, 2001) contains leftovers from the album and a 32-minute improvised soundtrack to a silent film of the 1930s.

Pinetop Seven refined their chamber folk style to an almost manic level on The Night's Bloom (Barbary Coast, 2005). Calmer, deeper melodic hooks are designed not to uplift but to penetrate and stay. Easy Company feels like a lounge version of R.E.M.'s The One i Love. Hurry Home Dark Cloud (only on the LP) sounds like a religious hymn. The spell-binding arrangements of strings, horns and keyboards insinuate further nuances that complicate the emotional puzzle. A Mouthful Of Expensive Teeth could be an operatic aria from a Broadway musical. Their broad canvas of timbres, from the piano-based noir ballad Fringe to the trumpet and violin dances in His Aging Miss Idaho, amounts to a psychiatric investigation of the vocalist's neurosis way beyond anything the lyrics may convey. Their method peaks in the quasi-gamelan rhythmic rainshower of June, delivered with Tim Buckley-esque jazzy frenzy. The only drawback is that each vignette lasts just about the time to absorb the feast of sounds. One is left with a feeling of fragility, despite the density of events, which is a pity given the amount of work that went into surgically crafting the minutiae of songs such as the orchestral country hymns Born Among The Born Again, Made a Whisper out of me and Witness.

Beneath Confederate Lake (Empyrean, 2006) collects Pinetop Seven leftovers.