Dwight Smith

Dwight Smith developed his catalog of songs over a decade of roaming The Americas--from the timbered hills and coastal wetlands of his native New England to the fire-swept chaparral of California; from Alaska’s snow hooded peaks to the jungle-steeped, ruin-littered sierras of Peru--an itinerant bard in restless pursuit of creative communion as antidote to modern specters of estrangement and spiritual atrophy, rallying towards exaltation in shared catharsis. The amoebic orbit of Smith’s voice swings between the gravities of Jeff Mangum, David Longstreth, and Tim Kasher, while his peculiar chord diction and picking style recall such disparate influences as Seu Jorge, Erik Satie, and Nick Drake. 

His work, which combines elements of indie folk and baroque pop, has been called "haunting and delightful" (Terrascope) and "a fascinating personal take on folk" (Folk World). His upcoming split with Monté on Punctum Records will be his first release since 2012’s Lateral Drifts (Twin Lakes).

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Our bodies are driven to sustain and reproduce without worries of a greater meaning. It’s no wonder that our minds and hearts are similarly driven forward to understand and create, all the while vexed by how the facts of the physical world may or may not add up to very much at all. Our faculties might just make us tragic because they allow us to dream of and define beauty, completeness and peace that seemingly can’t exist in our physical world.

But what is more hopeful than filling a void with ringing voices?  What better answer can we give monstrous solipsism than to write of what we see and feel so that others will understand? Dwight Smith seems to be heeding this call with his collection of sad, hopeful, and gorgeous songs that pull us through these questions, pull us into him. Ringing voices, plaintive horns, and sparkling keys drift over a sunset river of shimmering, spiraling, tumbling fingerpicked melodies, carrying us to a place of shared fragile exhilaration. In each song, Smith pulls us behind his minor chords and harmonies towards what will certainly be a maelstrom and wreck but instead drops us gently each time into glorious but sadly complex resolution.