From the fertile northern prairie metropolis of Winnipeg, Ontario, the band Nathan creates a kind of fractured acoustic north-Midwestern rootsy swing sound around the vocals of primary songwriter Keri McTighe and Shelley Marshall, whose entwined voices fall somewhere between Iris DeMent's Iowa twang and Nanci Griffith's Texas sopranino, with close, rubbing harmonies that recall those favored by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. McTighe's poetry rarely rhymes and barely scans on the page, but its cockeyed wit ("I'm going down the highway with a suitcase full of all my bad ideas / Going to check them out / See what I have been missing all these years") and puzzling imagery ("And as sure as a sharp corner comes a jack-knife kind of creepiness / Sweeps up and over me") seem perfectly mated to the ragged-but-right acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, pedal steel, theremin, accordion, trumpet, and other instruments that come and go like mysterious boarders passing through the comfy parlor of Devin Latimer and Dean Roy's bass and drums. This Jimson Weed should be left to grow wherever it can. 

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