Poison Packets

Product Description Saul Conrad's debut album "Poison Packets" is a collage of folk Americana and country songs. Saul Conrad, a 24 year-old singer songwriter from Boston, writes in a unique idiom, melding vivid poetry with long rolling melodies. His lyrics are deeply textural and symbolic and are laid tenderly over complex arrangements. Drawing inspiration from Townes Van Zandt and Elliott Smith, Saul has created a unique elegant style of his own. Review Conrad, a singer-songwriter raised in Brookline who lives now in Jamaica Plain, writes and sings at the intersection of Jonathan Richman and Daniel Johnston. The songs on Poison Packets are ostensibly folk, but they exist on the far fringes of the genre.Quirk has a strong place on this record, from the moony Mexico (which will remind a select few of Ed's Redeeming Qualities, an off-kilter indie-folk band that emerged in Boston's music scene in the late-1980s) to the good-natured twang of Whiskey Eggs. Frequently backed by Katie Schecter's vocals, Conrad's lyrics tend to be more suggestive than blatant. On the closing Sycamore he sings rather offhandedly, ''I'm gonna hide in your legs/Till the pain goes away.'' You know exactly what he means.Ten songs in 20 minutes, and yet the album compels you to hear it again. It doesn't necessarily come into sharper focus on repeated listens, but half the joy of Poison Packets is visiting Conrad's strange hinterlands. --James Reed, Boston Globe, October 25, 2012