Album Notes

I am telling you that SLIVERS + BITS, the sophomore album by anti-folk wunderkind Dibs, is available to the world.

The latest in a long line of quirky anti-folk ingeues, including Beck, Adam Green and Jeffrey Lewis, Dibs applies that time-honored tradition of offbeat songwriting to his own private world of computers, alligators and ducks. With a low voice, both sweet and deadpan, and a guitar-style both virtuosic and sloppy, Dibs carves out a space of compassion and intelligence in a landscape of boring love songs and thinly-veiled songwriterly misogyny.

Known for his work in anti-folk flagship bands Cheese On Bread, Huggabroomstik and Urban Barnyard, Dibs began his cultural life as an anonymous Moldy Peaches fan. But, after a stint working the soundboard at the Sidewalk Cafe and two years generating buzz with his old band, Dibs & Sara, this Jersey boy established himself as a musical force in his own right. Though he typically shuns the spotlight, this 21-year-old nerd heart-throb already boasts his own fan club, composed of people he doesn't even really know.

The follow up to "More Unsent Letters," his first release (a lo-fi, guitar-and-voice lark he recorded in under an hour), SLIVERS + BITS is a more textured affair, with occasional drums, bass, keyboards, and guest appearances by Yoko Kikuchi (of Dream Bitches), Dan Fishback (of Cheese On Bread), and others. A smooth, writerly album, SLIVERS + BITS is a meditation on materialism and loss. Dibs sings about the fundamentals of life (love, time, music) as simply things to acquire and misplace. Note the rousing, Gilbert and Sullivanesque "Walkways," with its loopy, catchy refrain, "I am carrying time on a walkway, but it keeps on dropping."

Jonathan Richman meets Beat Happening. Daniel Johnston punches Stephen Merritt. Anyway you compare him, Dibs is his own weirdo.