With the recent unveiling of Matthew Daniel Siskin's moniker, Gambles, there is a long-dead burning within me to hear nothing but the acoustic guitar. It's rare in the current cold-beating music cloud to find an acoustic artist so determined to stand out and unshake our fingers from the laptop keys, and given the earnest, thick-skinned delivery of “Far From Your Arms”, Gambles has me rapt. Siskin recorded the four-track Far From Your Arms EP at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn with longtime friend and collaborator Nicolas Vernhes and the result is a raw, doomy, melodrama of depth that echoes just long enough to stick on your skin like an early summer day's sunburn.
“Far From Your Arms” is the anti-shame. It's cutting open a rich fruit and watching the juice pour out. Siskin's rasp gives the feeling that even without the layers of reverb, his power would travel far. The debut EP will be released on the GMBLS imprint on May 7, and you can take a listen to its namesake below. Gambles will play a show with Widowspeak on April 19 at the Knitting Factory.
