“Haints and saints don’t bother me,” sang some band, once upon a time – “I’m not alone, you see.”
Those “haints,” in this particular case, refer to the southernmost pronunciation of “haunts” – a word we don’t expect to hear from Vermont’s finest export, The Vacant Lots, not least on their New Year’s gift to us, a free track called “Kingdom Come,” though it expresses a sentiment they perhaps share – facing up to the holy and the profane.
The Vacant Lots can certainly conjure both the light and the dark – and their sound has always struck these ears as an ideal mix of the jittery charge of touching your tongue to a battery and the slow magic of a conjuring. And as a two-piece band (with a growing army of fans), they’re certainly not alone.
On “Kingdom Come,” however, The Vacant Lots are less alone than ever – getting an energetic assist from Spectrum drummer Roger Brogan on the mix, the electronics, the drone and, of course, the beat, the beat, the beat.
The beat goes on in 2012 … and we wouldn’t be happier to start sharing this year with you by sharing our staring at The Vacant Lots. Sing praise – thy kingdom is at hand.
“As I see it, the stars were once nameless, and the days and the months of the year. Then they had many names, names we gave them, and forgot, and misremembered. They fell in and out of their own timing, the seasons particular to the angle of the light, the pitch of the planet – by the laws of gravity earth’s one moon decided the tides.” – Deborah Digges, “The Stardust Lounge: Stories From a Boy’s Adolescence“
Revolt of the Apes 
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