“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.” Ray Bradbury wrote these words in Dandelion Wine, the novel in which a young boy named Douglas Spaulding floats through the summer of 1928. In 2024, D. Spaulding is the solo project of Eric Shuster, a musician based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, USA. Jilt Matrimonial Turkey Heartland Desert Classic Jubileeis his debut, an album of softly poetic, lo-fi bedroom folk crafted with quiet concentration and presented as a cassette release by Love’s Devotee, the fledgling label based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA.
The D. Spaulding project began in earnest after the loss of a friend. Intended as a music for coping, the songs of Jilt Matrimonial Turkey Heartland Desert Classic Jubilee bear themes of love and loss, one’s life’s work, family and the ephemeral. Presented with minimal arrangements and questioning lyrics, the songs have a haikulike quality which feels enigmatic but also intuitively relatable. For instance, “Bulldozer” is elegiac and wistful, depicting a drive through a forlorn landscape. But there are subtle joys as well, from monumental events like recognizing one’s family lineage while traveling in unfamiliar lands to something small like feeling the warm spot on the couch after the cat moves.
