Being so thoroughly useless in such a wide variety of ways, I can only watch in admiration in the video below as Hypershape Records builds, stains and brands the wood boxes that house the limited-to-100-copies reissue of U.S. Christmas‘ 2003 debut album, Prayer Meeting. The thing is so in tune with the natural order that it comes with a warning about import restrictions in case the country you’re ordering from doesn’t want you to bring things like seeds and leaves from elsewhere. To be fair, U.S. Christmas‘ music itself should probably always have that warning, since the North Carolinian psych explorers seem so able to conjure a sense of place in what they do; dug so deep into Appalachian dirt as they are, it’s easy to imagine a few seeds and roots getting in amid the organic sprawl of their songwriting. Prayer Meeting turns 15 years old this year, and to listen to the opening track “Death by Horses,” it only underscores how much out of time it existed in the first place. A band on their own wavelength and a songwriter in Nate Hall whose refusal to compromise his vision has led to an ongoing cult following despite the band’s most recent album, The Valley Path, having arrived in 2011.

Hall has of course embarked on a solo career — he released The Center of the Earth last year on Hypershape — and other members of the band have gone on to contribute to acts like Graceless, Generation of Vipers, Tasha-Yar and A Storm of Light, but U.S. Christmas‘ legacy has lingered in no small part thanks to the atmospheres brought to bear in the material. Experimentalist and organic at the same time, their stuff has never been for everyone. I panned 2010’s Run Thick in the Night when it came out and ate crow when I heard The Valley Path the next year; “duh, turns out this band’s kinda awesome.” But its resonance and the wide-open context of its creativity speak not only to the very real place from where it comes — Marion, NC, is in the western half of the state, about 40 minutes from Asheville by car and near the Lake James State Park — but a breadth of influence that’s as much ethereal as it is terrestrial. A handmade wooden box seems like a suitable container for it, and the leaves other found-on-the-trail whatnot included should be a fitting complement to the sound of Prayer Meeting itself, which only underscores how on their own plane U.S. Christmas have always been.

Prayer Meeting is released on Nov. 23 on Hypershape Records, and you’ll find the preorder link included in the info below the video, which comes courtesy of the label.

Please enjoy:

U.S. Christmas, “Death by Horses” promo video

Here comes the promotional clip for “Prayer Meeting” by the cult space rock band U.S. Christmas (ex-Neurot Recordings, now on Hypershape Records).

“Prayer Meeting” finally has been rediscovered, professionally remastered, and found its home in a ltd series of handmade and firebranded wooden boxes at Hypershape Records. Each box will be strictly unique and different from the previous one and will contain postcards and special gifts of nature like bark pieces or leaves collected by Nate Hall himself on the Appalachian mountains, other than a luxury 8-panel digipak with visuals reboot at HPS headquarter. Honest and sincere record, it represents how the USX path started back in the days.

Preorder here: https://hypershaperecords.bandcamp.com/album/prayer-meeting

IMPORTANT – boxes are 100% timber made and contains pieces of bark, seeds, leaves – BEFORE ordering be careful with natural items import restrictions in your country (Australia for example) – Hypershape Records is not responsible in case of those restrictions. Thank you.

Written, performed and recorded by U.S. Christmas
Nate Hall: guitar, vocals
Tim Greene: drums
John Presnell: bass
Matt Johnson: theremin

U.S. Christmas, Prayer Meeting (2003/2018)

U.S. Christmas on Thee Facebooks

U.S. Christmas BigCartel store

Hypershape Records on Bandcamp

Hypershape Records BigCartel store

Tags: Hypershape Records, Marion, North Carolina, Prayer Meeting, U.S. Christmas, U.S. Christmas Prayer Meeting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2018 at 7:49 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.