Let's dispense with the rhetoric and hollow threats of domination. Puritan is a discreet organism. Puritan has no following. Puritan is not part of any machinery, at least not any more so than most of us. Friends of Puritan have said lots of nice things about it over the years but most of these are in the form of unrecorded bits of conversation, not "quotes" or "reviews."

A little history then. Puritan began in the mid nineties with a series of cassettes now known as Triptych, although to refer to them as known would be stretching it. Although Sagittarius was recorded before these cassettes, it was not released until 1998. How To Move A Piano followed in 1999 on the Elsinor label. Come Sit By The Lake Tonight is the third Puritan full length compact disc.

During most of the nineties, Puritan architect David Hamma was in a band called The Burning Sofa No. 10. They changed their name in 1997 to The Burning Softies and, interestingly enough, broke up that same year. The Sofa/Softies released three albums, two of which are on Skinny Chest - The Curtain Drawn and The Curtain Parted.

As Hamma explains it:

We were what you might call an experimental pop band. Experimental because we liked weird sounds and were into the noisier, more spontaneous elements of the underground. Pop because we wrote songs with parts which might be referred to as verses and choruses and because we liked melody.

Puritan is pretty much an extension of the kind of songs that I brought to The Burning Sofa. Appropriate adjectives to describe these might be breezy, laconic, conversational, moody, melancholy, wry, ethereal, atmospheric. Oh yeah, sometimes these songs genuinely rock. However, describing one's own music is like trying to see through a mirror. Therefore, I leave the judging to others.

Contact: puritan@skinnychest.com