For their first collaboration, 2004's , two legends of low fidelity, and , lived up to their reputations for rudimentary recording by laying down all of the tracks live, direct to a single track of tape, singing and playing into the same microphone for the entire album. Almost ten years later, the follow-up is a lot less scrappy, actually multi-tracked, and even somewhat produced, especially by the standards of these artists. As founder of one of the more long-running independent cassette labels , has helped define the bedroom recording template, working in bands like . has worked solo cultivating his own sullen singer/songwriter dirges since the early '90s, amassing an enormous discography of ghostly folk expressions. With , the two songwriters match and contrast each other's strengths, trading back and forth song for song as offers up a low-brow, -esque indie stomper like "The Frayed End of the Rope" to counter a bummer track like the depressed cowboy sentiments of "Let's Make History Bleed." Recorded and mixed live by member , the songs are either open and soft, as on the organ-laced ballad "Tender Came By," or steeped in a rootsy warmth, as on more spirited tracks like "Lost Invitation." However, the talent of both writers is to offer a cracked look at traditional songwriting, so even though much of is on the more restrained and downtempo side of things, it never feels like a tepid folk set, but more inspired, urgent, and terrified. The hollow, depressive Americana of "Beat by Beat" captures the unique mood of the album perfectly, as minor-key guitar passages meet foggy noise textures and ghostly backing vocals, finding some creepy alternate world of lost highways, broken homes, and eternal twilights. ~ Fred Thomas