He combines emotional intimacy with a warm-hearted studio sound that recalls Nick Drake and Astral Week-era Van Morrison. Perkins deliberately circumvented the digital route, making demos at home before gathering a small group of fellow players and friends to cut these tracks to analog tape in a Burbank studio and at Victorian house in L.A. They helped Perkins flesh out material in which he transforms the at-times extraordinary circumstances of his personal life into compelling, dream-like songs with lyrics that teeter between the specific and the surreal. As Perkins became more visible with his three-piece ban bassist Brigham Brough, keyboardist/guitarist Wyndham Boylan-Garnett, and drummer Nicholas Kinsey, known collectively as Elvis Perkins in Dearland- his reputation has grown, along with the size of his audience. The enthusiasm of online bloggers helped. After seeing him at the Rockwood Music Hall On Manhattan"s Lower East Side, The folks at Stereougum declared, "We were sold on the spot- fuss-worthy folkies just don"t come easy...Double bass, harmonica and strings color these lyrical laments, but the man"s easy melodicism is the real charm.