Another musical project that Cynthia has been involved with is The Naysayer. ¿What's up with The Naysayer? "The Naysayer is still going on... Anna is playing solo shows as the Naysayer and she's recruiting various random people to play with her on the drums. And I hear that the plan is to make a new record in the summertime. I assume that will happen in New York City, I'm not sure. And hopefully they'll have me back to play bass."

But back to Cabin in the Woods , which is, as its predecesors full of references to nature and the country life. Where is the man-eating metropolis where they spent the two years before moving to the cabin? "Most of our songs, at least on this record, talk about the city a lot... or rather our quarrel with ourselves about whether to live in the country or the city. There's a lot of songs about the city, it's just not overt."

One wonders how they manage. "We don't have regular jobs and that's a huge bonus, in some ways. We have time to do our stuff, which we do all day long, allmost every day. The downside of that is that we don't have a lot of money to play with. I don't know... we just prioritize our work and that's what we do. Now it's a little hairy because the two projects I'm involved in are kind of folding in on each other, I'm recording a record for myself but I'm also preparing for a Retsin tour... It's a little nuts. So sometimes it gets tangled up like that, but usually we pace it so that I'm doing my solo thing and Retsin's taking a break. An then Retsin's doing it's thing and then I'm back on. And Cynthia last year was in this band, The Naysayer, and she really concentrated on that while I was concentrating on my solo effort. So it's a lot of juggling."

One of the most beautiful things about Retsin albums is the way they're recorded, with enough quality as to not be considered lo-fi, but faitfull to the relaxed vibe in which the songs were born. Since recording at home is usually something imposed by money matters I ask Tara what she would do if, like their friends Ida, Retsin had a lot of money to record. "I'd probably buy more equipment, spend more time on the project, buy more mics, fly our friends over, we'd eat better..." but the bottom line is they'd still record at home.

It isn't hard for anyone following the independent music scene to place Retsin among the small group worth mentioning, within the confusing mass of acoustic or semi-unplugged artists that continue American folk music tradition in a very personal way. But ¿where would they place themselves? ¿What bands or artists do they consider are on a similar wavelength to Retsin?

"Well.. I agree with lots of things. I don't know what's necesarilly similar to us. But bands that I like are Freakwater, from Louisville. I like the Mary Timony solo record. I like Edith Frost. We like Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams also. But as far as bands that are kind of on our level that we don't know personally. It's hard to say. There's just so many bands out there. I guess there's a lot of people doing things... but I don't know who they are. I don't really keep up with the scene very much. And even if I did I would probably be mistaken in thinking that we're like other bands like Palace or what have you..."

¿So what is in store for Retsin? We now know that Acuarela Records will release both a Retsin and a Tara Jane O'Neil EP. "The Tara Jane O'Neil band will do a 3 week tour of Europe because my record gets over there and I didn't go for the last record. Retsin will definetly do a Spanish tour in November. And we're trying to figure out when to go to like the UK and those kinds of places... We don't have distribution of our record over there and we're trying to find somebody who will put it out. We're trying to come over in June but we don't know yet... "

FIN