This old, old technique of barrel curing tobacco in Louisiana - making perique - just produces some of the most interesting fig-meets-plum-meets-pepper tastes imaginable. Blend that with some bright virginias and there's something super special that results.
OK, so someone asked me why I had not included three bands in my Underground Americana post that seemed to fit the Americana profile: Wayfarer, Blackbraid and Wolves in the Throne Room. I guess the easiest answer is because they have had enough mainstream exposure that I didn't think of them as "underground." I'll say this about both Wayfarer and Blackbraid - their music is more polished and less experimental than the three bands I listed, but its probably fair to say that they are still far from the collective consciousness of American music listeners, so I will in fact take a moment to comment on them all in response.
Wayfarer - in some ways these guys are analogous to Grave Pilgrim: both bands take up themes in American history, though Wayfarer is more directly trying to evoke a kind of spirit of the "Old West." If you haven't heard them, they pull in influences that range from atmospheric black metal, sludge, to the alt country-ish "Denver sound." The album you want to listen to is American Gothic. I mean, its a really, really solid and original work - I like it more than their previous albums and even more so as an ex Denver resident. So, yes, they should get a mention. Wayfarer, by the way, is *way* more polished than Grave Pilgrim, so if you were put off by the rawness of the album I posted a link to, this is much different music stylistically (Grave Pilgrim remains one of my favorite rock bands recording today).
That brings me to Blackbraid. This is a one man act from the Adirondacks, which combines hard charging early black metal influences with native American themes and an attempt to evoke the surrounding landscapes of upstate NY. Its like a band made especially for me - I used to solo camp, trout fish and grouse hunt the Adirondacks in my earlier days as often as I could. The whole region has a special feel and I'd be happy if I was stuck there in a cabin for many months at a time. I don't listen to metal albums often, but Blackbraid II has probably been the one I have played on repeat more than anything else for a long while. Personal favorite: The Wolf that Guides the Hunters Hand. His cover of Bathory's A Fine Day to Die is better than the original - that may or may not be saying a lot depending on your point of view, but its a cool cover. By the way, you can't compare them to Pan Native American Front, the take on native American experience is completely different, so is the music.
Lastly, Wolves in the Throne Room. I realize they get credit for pushing local acts to try to express the Cascadian landscape sonically, but their music is consistently barely listenable, the occultish themes they weave in are just stupid, and to add insult to injury folks I have spoken to who have seen them live have said the shows are terrible. So the reason I didn't highlight them is simple: I don't think much of them and don't understand their appeal. Two Hunters is their best album, though.
C Рождеством Христовым! Славим Его!
Christmas is almost upon us and during the preceding fast this year I've been drawn to the folk sounds of Appalachia. America has real culture, its just been hidden from us.
This beautiful - and really, I mean beautiful - folk carol And The Trees Do Moan is about as soulful as it gets. I don't know who these people are, but holy smokes are they good:
Mainstream label music is almost entirely so awful that it drives me to despair to hear most popular music these days - let alone realize it is willingly consumed by anyone. Here I offer three bands that are both a complete "fuck you" to popular music in form and function, but tie into something deep within the American cultural dna that makes them something special:
1 Grave Pilgrim, The Bigotry of Purpose. Raw riffing rock, barked vocals meditating on American and European history (plus other stuff). Tagline: chivalric violence and hideous cruelty. Best rock album of 2023 in my opinion. Best song, Rhiannon's Wake.
Their prior EP Molten Hands Reach West was just as good.
2 Panopticon, ...And Again, into the Light. Bluegrass meets atmospheric black metal on a journey through American geographies, old style anarchist complaints and the trials of life. Austin Lunn, the one man genius behind Panopticon, definitely uses music to exorcise his inner daemons (come to Divine Liturgy my friend to really get them out...). I have a lot of time for this guy. My favorite parts are the gravelly bluegrass ones, like....
Special mention for Panopticon's Kentucky. My forebears were coal miners.
3 Pan-Amerikan Native Front, Little Turtle's War. Indigenous metal meditating on past battles in the bloody unfolding of the American nation. We probably can stop screwing over natives in this country now.
Also, their split Immortal Ceremonies: someone must have thought "go hard or go home" on that one.
The Turning of Lot's Wife
Scott Cairns
Genesis 19. 23-26
First of all, she had a name, and she had a history. She was Marah, and long before the breath of death's angel turned her to bitter dust, she had slipped from her mother's womb with remarkable ease, had moved in due time from infancy to womanhood with a manner of grace that came to be the sole blessing of her aging parents. She was beloved.
And like most daughters who are beloved by both a mother and a father, Marah moved about her city with unflinching compassion, tending to the dispossessed as if they were her own. And they became her own. In a city given to all species of excess, there were a great many in agony--abandoned men, abandoned women, abandoned children. Upon these she poured out her substance and her care.
Her first taste of despair was at the directive of the messengers, who announced without apparent sentiment what was to come, and what was to be done. With surprising banality, they stood and spoke. One coughed dryly into his fist and would not meet her eyes. And one took a sip from the cup she offered before he handed it back and the two disappeared into the night.
Unlike her husband--coward and sycophant--the woman remained faithful unto death. For even as the man fled the horrors of a city's conflagration, outrunning Marah and both girls as they all rushed into the desert, the woman stopped. She looked ahead briefly to the flat expanse, seeing her tall daughters, whose strong legs and churning arms were taking them safely to the hills; she saw, farther ahead, the old man whom she had served and comforted for twenty years. In the impossible interval where she stood, Marah saw that she could not turn her back on even one doomed child of the city, but must turn her back instead upon the saved.
Musk Ox is a fantastic instrumental chamber folk project from up in Canada. I recently stumbled on these guys and their guitarist Nathanael Larochette from some collaborations he did with the (now defunct, but often brilliant) Oregon-based post metal/neofolk band Agalloch. Here's a neat documentary on the making of their album Woodfall.
Another cool project is the acoustic spin off that Nathanael did from the last Agalloch album.
His solo stuff is great. Music about trees and such.
