The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly (Hardly Art)

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly is about vision. The vision started with the banjo-playing Sam Simkoff, the founding member and primary songwriter of the indie-folk band Le Loup. Creating the bulk of the album by himself with a crappy mike and a laptop in his kitchen, Simkoff used Craigslist to recruit the six other musicians who now play with Le Loup. In under a year, these talented Washington, DC–based experimentalists went from a basement band to number one on the National Public Radio’s Top Ten Great Unknown Artists of 2007.

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly (named after an art work by Washington, DC, janitor James Hampton) justifies the hype, with the rise and fall of quiet vocals used to dramatic effect against energetic swells of crashing percussion and overlapping melodies. The almost always present plucking of a lonely banjo drenched in a mess of percussion, guitars, horns, organ, and electronic loops, creates a surging momentum that Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. Quiet songs like “Planes like Vultures” show a darker side of Simkoff, with his repeated “Oh, this world was made for ending”, while “We Are Gods! We Are Wolves!” has a more upbeat, electro-pop quality. Although The Throne leaves a somewhat bipolar feeling of wanting to clap along while lying on your bedroom floor in the dark, it’s pretty heavenly for something that began as a man in his kitchen with a banjo.