Jon @ Blue Mag
The premise alone of Brian Michael Roff's In the Analog Woods has me on board. Roff limited the recordings to banjo, guitar, accordian and vocals, a 4-track, and one Sure SM57, the affordable Swiss Army knife of DIY recording. I can always get behind that type of ambitious self-imposed limitation. Now for the music: Not suprisingly, In The Analog Woods has a stripped-down folky feel, think maybe a lighter, introverted Nebraska or a less heady Palace record. More Yankee coffee shop hootenany than genuinely rustic, Roff's voice has a pleasant Vic Chestnut-esque gruffness that really grows on you after a few listens. "The New Me" and "Rocks and Minerals" are the standouts of the collection, although "Make It A Dime", which closes the disc, suprisingly adopts a more modern feel and tempo, sounding like a rough demo of an indie rock song soon to be fleshed out with fuzz boxes and delay pedals. While most of his song structures and instrumentation are fairly standard, Roff's phrasing and lyrics set In The Analog Woods apart as a rare little gem in the crowded Americana landscape.



Joel Sinches @ The Noise
(October 2004 Issue)
The packaging on this tease of an EP from Brian Michael Roff look eerily reminiscent of Curious Ritual’s Get With It Girl. The cover opens up like a large book of matches and sports an old picture of yesteryear. The CD inside is PURE Brian Michael Roff. Recorded with a single microphone on a four track with only a guitar, banjo, and accordion, the songs sound as the title suggests: a songwriter out in the woods singing a lonely song by the campfire in the dead of night. There is something honest and real about Roff’s music. It is straight ahead, yet meaningful and unpretentious. I hope Brian Michael Roff gets noticed by more people and soon. This EP is a good way to get started.



Shorty @ Shmat
Brian Michael Roff, you had me already from the words "Tascam Porta-One using one SM57 microphone". My interest, that is. I'm always interested in these purported lo-fi claims (though because of it's Keep Recordings pedigree, I already assumed the quality was going to be on the high end). Many people lay claim to the joys of uni-microphonal recording bliss, but few pull it off so it doesn't sound exactly like that: a home recording using a cheap dynamic mic.

Well, no such problems here. Roff's EP, entitled "In The Analog Woods", mixes nice traditional folk instrumentation on banjo and accordian with poignant acoustic guitar driven tales like "The New Me" and "Rocks and Minerals". It definitely helps the cause of Roff's simple setup that the songs are uncluttered by extraneous instruments, lyrically astute, and lower in volume. I hear a lot of full four piece emopunk bands that try to do a recording with a single dynamic mic setup in the middle of the room. Baby, it just don't work that way too often. Here, Roff simply takes what he does best, which is mostly mellow country-folk, and presents it in a manner that goes down surprisingly smooth. The songs are neither overly bleak, nor excessively upbeat. More thoughtful than anything. In vocal style, he reminds me of Smog's Bill Callahan the most, maybe some Canadian Hayden on the outside, and a bit of Vic Chestnutt's nasal ponderings thrown in there for good measure.

The real test of an album like this is whether after about halfway through the CD, you're still thinking of it as a lo-fi, one mic production. Some initial fidelity problems are inevitable with this type of recording (though there didn't seem to be any on this disc) but if you can start to lose yourself in the actual songs after awhile, then you know that it must be pretty good. Which is what happened by about the time the second track, "Emergency" rolled around. I completely forgot about the nature of the recordings, leaned back in my office chair, and enjoyed the EP on repeat for awhile. And in the end, that's probably all that matters. The songs.



Sal Addays @ Foxy Digitalis
"I want to make an honest sound,” intones singer-songwriter Roff on “The Never-Ending Cause of Everything,” the opening song on this 2004 EP. And sure enough, he achieves his goal, using acoustic guitar and nicely-deployed banjo to put forth these stark, human songs. He cuts to the quick in a Townes Van Zandt sort of way on “Emergency” and “The New Me,” staking out a sort of cynically desperate plea to those who easily ignore (“Buried up to my neck, and then get out while you can,” from “The New Me”). This is the kind of barbed writing many singer-songwriters seem to have forgotten about in the wake of indie rock’s more simple plaints, and it’s good to hear it reclaimed here. Elsewhere, Roff displays a deft sense of humor, playing with words and rhymes on “In and Of Itself” and self-referentially winking on “Make it a Dime.” These are well-crafted songs, and here’s hoping Roff continues to explore the taut, dry despair imbuing the strongest of them.



Matt Dornan @ Comes with a Smile
Issue #16: AUTUMN 2004
On this six-track, very limited release (just 100 copies), Brian Michael Roff's creakin' chair folk music carries all the menace of a soporific Vic Chesnutt. With ragged voice, guitar, accordian and banjo as his pre-arranged palette, 'In The Analog Woods' was captured on four-track cassette with a solitary microphone. The results are expectedly lo-fi, intimate and stark, with both the rough-hewn authenticity of erstwhile folk and the resurgent appeal of contemporaries Charlie Parr, Mark Linkous, Pale Horse & Rider, Vic Chesnutt and Will Oldham.



David Cobb @ Splendid
"I want to make an honest sound," Brian Michael Roff sings on "The Never-Ending Cause Of Everything". And that he does. Roff's songs are bittersweet lo-fi gems that, in my mind at least, sound like Jeff Tweedy's inevitable solo album -- they're low-key and acoustic, with occasional harmonica and banjo accents for good measure. On the basis of In The Analog Woods's six tracks, Roff has a promising career ahead of him.

Like Brooklyn alt-country rockers The Damnwells, Roff sings about getting "out while you can" (on "The New Me"), and the Boston-area musician sings it like he means it. There's a sense of lonely innocence in Roff's songs that only makes them more appealing. "Rocks and Minerals" and "In And Of Itself", along with the very promising "Make It A Dime", are strong showcases for the intelligent, sensitive lyrics.

Understated in every sense of the word -- Roff recorded these songs on a 4-track with a single microphone -- In The Analog Woods should be an inspiration to all musicians. It's a timely reminder that it's all about the music -- not the style and hype.



Bethany Williams @ The Performer
In order to keep things simple this time around Brian Michael Roff set out with rules to adhere to in the making of this EP. The rules were to use only 4-tracks and only use banjo, guitar, accordion, and vocals. The starkness of the songs is explored as the wryest humor of Roff's career peeks through. The songs fall more on the side of traditional folk than his other releases have and more current sensibilities. In "Emergency," Roff has "no time for religions, God, or thee" and his twisted words seem to echo with the transcendental classicism of the area he lives (just down the road from Walden Pond). It's in "The New Me" where Roff sings melodies and countermelodies against the main vocal line that show that singing just might open the possibility for Roff to have indeed created a second self. Even the quietest strumming strikes hard in an effort to mean something... with a limited palate of instruments to draw from each pluck is given more weight. The words dance on top of the mix with everything placed so that it sounds like he's sitting just next to you (unless of course the speakers are in the other room). Arizona's Keep records found Roff online and offered to release an EP of material and it is this that created In the Analog Woods. The packaging of the disc is an ingenious paper fold that works like a matchbook. There's a black and white photo of folks frying up breakfast over an open fire (you can tell since there's a coffeepot on there). The disc operates much the same way, the fire that has been created on this disc is no arson out to eradicate whole neighborhoods. Instead Roff uses everything from the glowing embers to the stones that contain the flame to make a simple set of six songs that embrace the notions of what Americana is really supposed to be about.



Matt Shimmer @ Indieville
KEEP's press sheet explains the rules Brian Michael Roff abided by for In The Analog Woods - only 4-track recording was to be employed, and banjo, guitar, accordion, and voice were the only instruments allowed. This set-up worked perfectly for this six song EP, giving us twenty minutes of pure, folk bliss not far off from some Palace material. The key to Roff's music is a distinct hopefulness that manifests itself both in the music's feel and the actual lyrics. Opener "The Never-Ending Cause of Everything," for example, is a short and joyful song whose melody is complemented by some excellent guitar/banjo interplay. Even the more solemn songs have a sense of hope in them - the delicate "Emergency" is personal and strangely optimistic, and "Rocks and Minerals" is desperate but still sweet and pretty. Every once in awhile, you hear a hint of Elliot Smith or Nick Drake, but this is considerably more twangy, and far less depressed. In The Analog Woods is another strong release for KEEP, and another excellent introduction to a relatively obscure musician.



Jeff Marsh @ Delusions of Adequacy
It’s refreshing, halfway through the first decade of the 2000s, to know that computers, electronics, and a love of the digital age have not completely overcome our sensibilities. Rebelling almost without trying, there’s always been a slate of folk artists who approach music the way it’s been done for hundreds of years: with simple instruments and voice. We’ve heard so much rock – plugged in and loud – and experimental electronic noise that to go back to albums such as Brian Michael Roff’s In the Analog Woods seems quaint.

It’s almost like you’re in those analog woods with Roff, sitting across from a camp fire while he plays you his tunes. Roff is a subtle songwriter, willing to embrace simplicity for sincerity’s sake. On this EP, Roff set himself rules some basic rules: use only his 4-track and use only banjo, guitar, accordion, and vocals. The result is quiet and light folk-influenced songs.

The banjo lends a kind of down-home sensibility to the simple “The Never-ending Cause of Everything,” as does the very simple accordion playing. Better is his quiet singer/songwriter numbers, like the softly sweet “Emergency” and the heartfelt “The New Me,” which adds Roff’s own backing vocals as one of his four tracks. Roff’s voice breaks a little on “Rocks and Minerals,” probably the best track and the one that shows off his songwriting abilities to its fullest. The accordion is a better accompaniment on “In and Of Itself,” and banjo is a pretty backing to the acoustic guitar of “Make it a Dime.”