Sample and buy Who Is In My Temple and Clearing at Other Music Digital, or buy the Clearing CD.

Clearing -- Joan Minkoff, Jeff Brewer and Sara Benson -- began in 1971 when the Unitarian Universalist Association asked a couple of musicians in the Boston area to record an album version of their 1964 hymnal Songs For The Celebration Of Life. It's the only record of its kind that I'm aware of. It could be that I like this album because I remember the songs as an early 80s kid dragged to Unitarian church or "Sunday morning comedy club" as I called it because of the insistence on usually very corny humor in the sermons. The album has an unpretentious, minimal & informal feel that is way too real to compute with the average "wyrd" listener, and proves that hip music can come from unlikely places.

Clearing is much better known in the folk / psych collecting circuit for their second, self-titled album, which consists of mostly original compositions and a few traditionals. Sporting the cover of a moody SSW / folk monster, Clearing instead continues the first album's mission of presenting uncomplicated music in a modest manner, this time eschuing the studio altogether and recording in large part in their "commune" home in the suburbs.