*** John Wolfington

JOHN WOLFINGTON

(Smells Like Records)

The debut disc from Brooklyn-based (and Colombian-born) singer/songwriter John Wolfington is being touted as part of the next wave of neo-gothic folk — which isn’t as bad as it sounds. A protégé of Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley (who ably assists here), Wol ngton has both a goth’s air of dolor and the downtown indie-rock affectedness one might expect from a Sonic Youth affiliate. This homonymous CD owes a great debt to the sort of spare and moony post-folk associated with Arab Strap. In fact, it says a great deal about Wolfington’s bare-bones ethos that the disc’s bonus songs — demo tracks recorded in a bathroom — are virtually indistinguishable from its “real” studio recordings. The result is a somber, serious, and largely convincing debut, airy and gentle and filled with drum loops and sleepy guitars. Almost every track is a mid-tempo ballad about awkward love or societal displacement artfully sketched and sung with little expression. The somnolent, trippy “Coney Island” is a gone-wrong love song that even name-drops Sonic Youth.

— Allison Stewart