This is an excellent album, it feels like a ride across America through deserts, small town drunken episodes and a return to the wild west.
There’s an ambience to the album but also an uneasy feel from choppy, looping elements that often have a glitched or broken feel.
Woke Up In Reno
An edgy opening from looping riff and chords, glitchy background sounds add a great element, really harsh at times. If that’s what’s it’s like to wake up in Reno, not sure I want to go.
Heist (Barrel Tonk for Nancarrow)
A scene from a western with a gunfight, staccato, choppy looping piano riff and glitch for good measure.
Stop Motion Mississippi
Slide guitar riff with looping piano chord, there’s a great contrast between the laid back ambience of the guitar and urgency of the piano chord. Excellent use of loopers and nice return to a glitchy loop of ‘Heist’ and what sounds like a quote from a film.
Twister
Growly bass rumble to open, birds and continuation of ‘Heist’ / film loop interspersed with extreme noise / distortion.
It Is What It Is (Incorporated)
Slide guitar riff, it has looping and detuned qualities that are used to create almost rhythmic elements. An excellent contrast to Twister.
Quiet on the Frontier
A looping slide guitar riff with pauses to create rhythmic elements and detuning creating an edgy feel that contrasts with a superb sounding slide riff.
Ballad of Bruce McClain
It’s a superb arrangement of slightly over driven guitar playing western infused bass / chords / riff with harmonised vocals telling an excellent small town tale. Beware the whisky.
Reclusive Kingdom
A looping, choppy guitar riff leads into a clean loop, similarly processed. It’s a theme through the song with various processing.
Long Distance Phone Call
An acoustic country song with superb harmonies, it’s a tale about a break up and the subsequent drunken phone call.
Sonoma
A broken, choppy riff, looping qualities and an ambience that’s quite unsettling.
Scorpion
A distorted riff with looping qualities, layered sounds give a captivating ambience yet equally it’s unsettling and edgy with a haunting and trippy feel to a welcomed, slow release.
Bell Jar of Whisky
A lonesome vibe to this song with acoustic guitar and vocals that have a huge presence at times. It’s a drunken tale of heartache and despair.
Gunslinger’s Lurk
A field recording of someone outside, an unspecified location but you hear insects, dogs and presumably the gunslinger preparing for something, leading into a looping radio type of broadcast. It creates an anticipation, a sense of foreboding.
Where Do You Want It
Slide guitar with a glitchy, edgy, looping feel accompanied by a narration, sounds like a conversation you’d hear in a film, it’s really unsettling.
O’er The Years
Full sounding slide guitar riffs give an ambience with an edge of tension and a cautious optimism.
