The Horse’s Ha

Because the group took its name from your Dylan Thomas’ short story The Horse’s Ha, one might assume that band was a British folk revival group with art house intentions, but Horse’s Ha comes from Chicago, IL, although there is nothing at all actually remotely Midwestern about their sound. Horse’s Ha is actually Freakwater’s Janet Bean as well as the Zincs’ Jim Elkington having a postmodern jazz trio (Fred Lonberg-Holm, Nick Macri, and Charles Rumback — three of Chicago’s finest improvising music artists) in it, and the effect sounds a little like Pentangle on coughing syrup. The group’s debut recording, the eerie and persuasive From the Cathmawr Back yards (named following the graveyard presented in Thomas’ tale), premiered by Hidden Plan in ’09 2009.