Time is just precipitation in Small Houses songs. The minutes drip by. The hours climb all kinds of mountains, stretching and stretching like a ribbon of pavement, but really all that the seconds do is tick down on people, soaking into the fibers of their clothing. These nuggets of time are reminders of the boredom and of the horrifically pedestrian pace of all that passes or is passing. It's that feeling of being in a car that's stuck behind another that's going 10 miles below the speed limit, on a hilly two-lane highway, where you can never get around them. Jeremy Quentin is an expert witness to the agonizing drawl of time and to all of the minor, but painful interruptions that ripple through it and him. The characters in these sad folk songs have done so much banging of their heads against the walls that it's now become the only way that they can get to sleep at night. It's become that soothing rocking, that swaddling that's needed for them to find rest. These are cries in the night -- all carried out in harsh isolation, or where there are dim lights for one.