Message

There are moments of genuine noise and terror on singer-songwriter Daughn Gibson’s debut solo LP, All Hell, but not of the devil’s-horns kind. Instead, the 31-year-old Carlisle, Penn., resident fashions ghostly, haunting country-ish ballads out of Christian gospel samples and looping audio software while his rich baritone narrates small-town tragedy.Gibson’s affinity for country music— as well as the genre’s cherished storytelling tradition— began when he started driving trucks for a living nearly a decade ago. “I started listening to country when there was nothing else to listen to on the radio when I was driving,” he says. “I started liking the stories, no matter how absurd they sounded. I liked that they were portrayals of people, or scenarios, or nostalgia.” To this day, he’s still working in the trucking industry, as an HR representative.

Years before going solo, Gibson took up the drums as a pre-teen after “staying up and watching Metallica and Guns N’ Roses videos.” He played in bands with names like Nokturnal Acid and Natal Cream throughout high school and eventually joined up with childhood friends Joel Winter and Randy Huth in the stoner-metal outfit Pearls and Brass, which presently operates as an on-and-off concern.Gibson was inspired to explore the dusty, lonely, electronically decayed sounds on All Hell after moving further into central Pennsylvania, where there weren’t as many like-minded musicians to start a band with. With the moral support of Pissed Jeans’ Matt Korvette, whose White Denim label is releasing the album, Gibson pieced the record together over the course of 2011. Later on this year, he’ll be touring with a band setup, too.