Navigator is the one man show of Farmington, Utah's Braden J. McKenna. This is his first album. He recorded it, apparently, in a bunch of bedrooms and living rooms. It is packaged neatly in a cardboard envelope. Perhaps, most importantly, it is a fantastic album. Clocking in at just past a half-hour, McKenna sums up what has been great about lo-fi, DYI, indie one man outfits of the past decade. "Throwing Tongues" channels everything from the drunken homeless blitzkrieg of early modest mouse, the stumbling loops of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, the subtleties of Chad VanGaalen, the intensity of The Microphones, and even the preciousness of group like Page France. I know that's a lot of references, but I mean it when I say he sums up what is positively best about all of them, and converts into to this brief sliver of beauty. It's the homey feeling of the album that makes it a winner, the post-track conversations between musicians, the chattering of a baby towards the close of "Good and Evil", the recordings of evangelical ministers, the occasional times every instrument is off the beat. McKenna can be subtlety weaving magical little stories with a lilting, Jeff Mangum-from-the-deep-south, voice and some simple finger picking one instant, and then bruising you with guitar blasts from broken amps and wiry synths.

Deep down, this is an incredibly earnest release. Its certainly easy to get sick of weak-voiced oddballs with harmoniums, jangly drums, old acoustic guitars and poor electronics. Hell, a lot of that stuff is done for the sake of doing it (yourself). But "Throwing Tongues" gives you the sense that these are fragments from McKenna's life, the people he knows, the places he's been. There is an unmistakable inspiration this music comes from. All its tripped-up loops and poor instrumentation swell a lot higher than they could in the hands of others. It's a pretty great slice of weird, a perfect example of how with the slightest of tools one can construct beautifully broken orchestras. 9/10 -- John Ganiard (15 October, 2008)