This album is totally pastoral, a subdued guitar trip of fingerpicking and surprising lo-fi electronic touches. It’s no less impassioned than Rites of Spring, but couldn’t sound more different. Does Fellows worry about freaking out the fans of his first band? After all, the reverence shown for Rites of Spring often borders on the evangelical, and it’s been years since he’s put his name on a record of his own. “Rites of Spring fans will think about Miighty Flashlight not too long. They’ll imagine themselves as themselves,” Fellows says in typically cryptic fashion. “I can’t wait,” he decides. There’s guitar virtuosity on display in Fellows’ songs that manages to simultaneously thrill and calm — songs are cool and melancholy by turns. “I was blindly stabbing at the Jansch/Page nexus mostly,” Mike declares, referring to the cult British folkie and guitar revolutionary Bert Jansch and his most famous protégé, Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Fellows shouldn’t be too humble about his lineage — he really does accomplish an updating of Jansch’s style, sending shimmering and complex musical figures out from his instrument. Along with his lackadaisical singing voice, a southern Gothic drawl, the Miighty Flashlight has created some positively futuristic and human folk music. What exactly does the moniker Miighty Flashlight mean? According to Mike, “Currently, it means the death of celebrity worship.” JENNA PAMESON User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License;