Introducing Daughn Gibson

Name: Daughn Gibson
From: Carlisle, PA
Story: Truck-drivin' punk discovers country music, crooning
Sound: Outlaw country, chopped and screwed

Meet Daughn Gibson: teenaged punk turned 20-something stoner rocker turned 30-something country crooner. Of sorts. The former drummer of sludgy stoner outfit Pearls and Brass served a stint as a truck-driver, which found him becoming intimately acquainted with country music. This became the inspiration for Gibson's newfound solo project, which comes at country in a most unexpected fashion.

Rather than sitting down with a slide guitar, Gibson started cutting up a library of samples, drawing from American folk recordings, Gospel albums, and orchestral suites. Lyrically, Gibson tried to replicate the down-and-out storytelling of drinkin'-n'-cryin' country; being particularly drawn to the hard-won, heartaching masculinity of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and their outlaw country contemporaries.

There's echoes of Cash in Gibson's deep baritone croon, though the influence of Scott Walker and Lee Hazlewood seems more apparent. On "Ray," he recalls —quite strongly— a more ironic deep-voiced figure, sounding exactly like Magnetic Fields/Gothic Archies leader Stephin Merritt. Though there's none of Merritt's silliness nor Tin Pan Alley songwriting fixations, Gibson's weird intersections between electronic sound and country licks have a precedent in the Magnetic Fields.

Gibson's cut-up country sound has been ably captured on All Hell, a full-length that serves as his first-ever release. It arrived out-of-nowhere early in 2012, as fully-formed and unexpected a debut as the year has offered.

• Download: Daughn Gibson, "In the Beginning"
• Listen: Daughn Gibson, "Tiffany Lou"
• Listen: Daughn Gibson, "Lookin' Back on '99"