Music: Auld Lang Syne

In their first year or so of scuffling around in the rehearsal attic, few bands nail down their sound as well as Auld Lang Syne has done with “Where My Fortune Lies,” a chunging, back-porch anthem featuring the beautifully harrowing vocals of Timothy Dick, surrounded by ghostly harmonies. It’s a wonderful recording by the scruffy Rochester roots-rock outfit, which you can preview on the band’s MySpace site, www.myspace.com/auldlangsyneband.

Meanwhile, Auld Lang Syne is finishing its first abum, with plans for a CD release party May 2 at the Bug Jar.  You can also see the melancholy-drenched band, which is already near the top of The Critical Mass Power Ratings (Currently No.1: The Campbell Brothers), at an April 3 show at The Mez. “When I played music, I tended to grab a piano or a guitar and play very slow, almost dirge-like music,” Dick said in an interview that ran in the March 19 Democrat and Chronicle. “Very sparse, very stark, and sing very quietly and in a husky, dirty kind of voice. That bore a lot of resemblance to the landscape I grew up in, with the fields and the dust and the flat land. And sometimes the brutal honesty of it, if you were listening to it in a certain frame of mind, it kind of gets to people.”